


Just A Tad

by MissLiterary



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Has No Chill, Adam Parrish Is Trying His Best, Adam Parrish is Bad at Feelings, Adam Parrish-centric, Awkward Crush, Bad Flirting, Bad Flirting Tad Carruthers Style, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Getting to Know Each Other, He Was On One Page, Hurt Adam Parrish, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Magic Revealed, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Richard Gansey III is a Good Friend, Romantic Comedy, Ronan Lynch Being an Asshole, Study Date, Tad Is Trying His Best Okay, This Week On The Bachelor, Unrequited Love, Who Even Is This Guy, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissLiterary/pseuds/MissLiterary
Summary: Tad Carruthers always knew there was something special about Adam Parrish, but he didn’t quite expect what that was.Set during Blue Lily, Lily Blue, where Tad Carruthers was featured for a total of four paragraphs.Chase your dreams, Tad.
Relationships: Tad Carruthers/Adam Parrish
Comments: 29
Kudos: 45





	1. First Day

Tad Carruthers wasn’t rememberable.

He was only as special as the other boys at Aglionby, which was to say, he wasn’t special at all. When every student in Aglionby Academy was talented, handsome, and charming, then none of them were. Talented became standard, and handsome became average, and charming became annoying.

Tad was all of those things.

At least his name was easy to remember. He’d seen what would happen to his roommate’s expression every time a teacher asked for a “Loret” or a “Loreet” or, even better, a “Lor-ee-ate.”

“It’s Laureate,” he muttered under his breath on the good days. On the bad days, Tad physically restrained him from standing onto his chair and shouting out the pronunciation one syllable at a time.

Laureate could handle math and played the trumpet in the Algionby band, just as Tad could get decent scores in World History and was a member on the rowing team. Expected skills of any student with an insignia of a raven on their chest would have, interchangeable as any.

Together, they were two more young adult males among a sea of young adult males in matching uniform. Each and everyone one of them shouting and yelling and laughing at only the most absurd things, which became nothing absurd at all, because they were all doing it. No matter how outrageous or unorthodox one of them acted, it was just as outrageous and as unorthodox as the student next to him. Their concession of noises and failed backflips had become the most common behavior observed of their species.

But Tad knew someone who was rememberable.

Or, more accurately, who was unforgettable.

There was one big issue, though: Tad couldn’t see him.

He couldn’t see him anywhere.

That wouldn’t have been half as big of an issue, except that Tad knew that he was a scholarship student, and it was the first day of school after summer break. The first horrific thought that popped into his head was that the school had kicked him out.

He tried not to make it obvious that he was searching for someone in the jumbled heap of students making their way up the stairs to the Borden House for Latin class.

Then he walked down the hall to the class and oh, there he was. Already in the classroom. Tad wanted to facepalm because, honestly, that should not have surprised him. Of course scholarship got there early. He had probably been there for the past hour.

Adam Parrish was the kind of special that thought he could blend in with all the unspecials. He did it well, most of the time, but anyone who stared at him long enough would pick out that there was something about him that didn’t belong in the room full of people he was in. Something that was better suited on its own, so people could see it better, appreciate it more.

Waves of overlapping conversations trailed in behind Tad as students piled into the room.

“Where have you been on break, man?”

“Cape, always, where else?”

“So boring. Vail.”

“Mom broke her ankle.”

“Oh, you know, we did Europe, hobo style.”

One guy passing by asked Tad about his vacation. He didn’t know him well, but they were on the same rowing team, and Tad vaguely remembered telling the guy that he was going to see family before summer had started.

Tad happily added to the clutter of noise, putting in his two cents. “Granddad said I needed to get some muscles because I was looking gay these days.” By the expression on the guy’s face, Tad rolled his eyes and enlightened him, “No, he didn’t really say that. Speaking of which, here’s Parrish.”

Sometimes Tad wondered if Adam was even aware of how unforgettable he was.

He thought it would be a good idea to remind him.

Tad wasn't sure, exactly, how to do that though. He briefly toed with the idea of saying something. A simple "Hey, good morning," would suffice, if he wanted Adam to think he was as special as the next person to pull up in the McDonald's drive-thru.

He came over and cuffed him upside the head.

Adam Parrish blinked up. One way, then the other. Tad had to wonder how he didn’t notice that he had walked up beside him. Even with the noises filling up to the classroom ceiling, he should have heard him coming. Tad made enough ruckus when he walked for anyone in the building to know where he was at all times.

“Oh,” Adam said when he saw him.

Tad grinned, charmed by his standoffishness.

“Oh,” Tad mimicked back to him benevolently. So badly he wanted to ask about his vacation, but he refrained. Adam was staring at him and Tad knew he was going to lose his nerve in about ten more seconds.

So instead he turned to the seat that Tad would have taken if this person didn’t exist: one of the Lynch brothers, the scary one, the one that was reclined back in his chair, legs on the desk, eyes closed.

He was off his guard, so Tad raised a hand to cuff him too, just to show Adam that it was in Aglionby culture to greet one another with some form of a physical hit.

But, yeah, no. That was a stupid idea. It was also in Aglionby culture that invoking a Lynch would most likely end in death and Tad wasn't really in the mood to die so soon into the school year. About an inch into the swing he chickened out, but Adam was still watching him, so Tad went for drumming his fingers on the Lynch’s desk instead. That was still a greeting.

Tad moved on and sank into the chair that looked like it was the most difficult for Adam to see from where he sat.

Many of the students had conjoined at the front of the class, admiring what was written on the blackboard, and by admiring, they were snickering at it. Only two people had been in the class before the rest of them had arrived, so either Adam or the Lynch must have written it. Therefore, it had been the Lynch. Adam would have never written a thing on the blackboard without permission. The Lynch would have only written something if he didn't have permission.

Tad didn’t care for it. He couldn’t read Latin anyway. He simply slumped onto his desk, letting his face press into the wooden surface.

“Dude, class hasn’t even started yet,” said the same guy that had asked about his vacation, laughing as he took the desk next to him. Tad was touched by the gesture, enough so that he scraped together enough will to live to lift his head back up. Fellow rowing team members had to stick together.

He grinned at the guy, but the guy quickly became distracted by something another guy was saying, so Tad returned his focus to ahead of him, just in time to see one of the students appear in the doorway. Tad recognized him in an instant, but not because he was a member of the rowing team too, and not because he was also the captain of the rowing team. It was because he was Richard Campbell Gansey the Third.

He was the kind of guy to speak with teachers in the halls, like he was now. What they were talking about, Tad couldn't imagine. He had never engaged in a conversation with a teacher of his own volition unless it was to plead for an extension, but Dick Gansey seemed to be completely at ease. He bid the teacher goodbye and stepped into the classroom.

He wasn’t late by the class standard, but he was late by the standard of the migration of students that Tad had been swept up in.

Dick Gansey, though, never traveled with the other migrators. He only traveled with two people: one of the Lynches, and always the same one, and…

Dick Gansey took the seat in front of Adam with a sigh. He turned around and said to him, “Jesus Christ, I haven’t slept a second,” and then extended his fist. Adam bumped knuckles with him.

These were the two people Adam hung out with. Dick Gansey, whom Tad suspected was related to some sort of royal line on the other side of the Atlantic, and the scary Lynch, whom Tad suspected was wanted for murder. They were the few in school who were as special and as interesting as Adam was. They gravitated towards each other, those few rare gems in a world full of gravel.

Tad let his face hit the desk again. He didn’t lift it again until the new Latin teacher walked in, since the one from before summer had died or something.

Loud noises didn't often catch an Algionby student's attention, but the absence of it did, so when the class fell into a sudden silence, Tad lifted his head and—

God damn it, this new teacher was just as refined. Too refined, Tad thought, for Aglionby. Look, even Adam's eyes were lighting up, and that wasn't an easy thing to do. Tad would know. He had tried. Keyword here: tried.

The teacher swept off his dark coat as he took in what the Lynch had left on the blackboard, which still looked like a jumble of poorly written letters to Tad, but clearly the teacher was getting something from it.

“Well, look at you,” he said. His eyes lingered on Adam, Dick, and the Lynch—because of course they did. “America’s youth. I can’t decide if you are the best or worst thing I’ve seen this week.”

 _Depends on which one of us you’re looking at,_ Tad thought idly, already losing interest. He traced the lines in the wood of his desk.

“Whose work is this?” he asked next.

 _Lynch,_ Tad and everyone else answered in their heads. No one dared speak it for Algionby culture and the fear of invoking the Lynch's wrath.

“Vocabulary’s impressive,” the man continued as he inspected the words. He tapped his knuckles against a few of them. “But what’s going on with the grammar here? And here? You’d want a subjunctive here in this fear clause. ‘I fear that they _may_ believe this’ —there should be a vocative here. _I_ know what’s being said here because I already know the joke, but a native speaker would have just stared at you. This is not usable Latin.”

The Lynch was pissed, more so than his usual default state, but Tad had trouble noticing that when his head was swimming with words like “subjunctive” and “vocative.”

“Good thing, too, or I’d be out of the job. Well, you little runts. Gentlemen. I’m your Latin teacher for this year. I’m not really a fan of languages for the sake of languages. I’m only interested in how we can use them. And I’m not really a Latin teacher. I’m a historian—”

Then why was he in their Latin class, was what Tad wanted to know.

“—That means I’m only interested in Latin mechanisms to—to—rifle through dead men’s papers. Any questions?”

Yes. Many. Tad had many questions, but he didn't know how to even begin deciphering the mess in his head to pick out one that would make sense. Every student eyed the new teacher with the same lack of understanding that Tad felt, so that at least made him feel a little bit better.

He perked up when Adam raised his hand.

The teacher pointed to him.

“ _Miserere nobis,”_ he said. _“Timeo nos horrendi esse._ Sir.”

Tad blinked. No one was surprised that Adam knew the language well, but he could fucking _speak it?_

“ _Nihil timeo,”_ the teacher replied. _“Solvitur ambulando.”_

 _Ambulance?_ Tad wondered, head hurting. He gave up. This was the equivalent of that Spanish conversation he had heard between two people in the grocery store yesterday. He had stood right next to them in the dairy aisle and could hear them clearly, but that didn't count for anything when he still walked away having no idea what had transpired next to him. They could have been criticizing his Minecraft shirt and he would have never even known.

Adam and the new teacher could be criticizing his Minecraft shirt right now for all he knew.

Without raising his hand, the Lynch then joined the conversation with a, “Heh. _Noli prohicere maccaritas ad porcos.”_

“Margaritas” was all Tad heard from that.

“Are you pigs, then?” the teacher then asked. “Or are you men?”

 _Depends on which one you’re looking at,_ Tad repeated in his head.

Adam’s Henrietta accent came back into play then. “ _Quod nomen est tibi,_ sir?”

“My name,” the man began dramatically, sweeping away a huge junk of the Lynch’s writing on the blackboard and then picking up a marker and replacing it with letters of his own. “is—”

Colton Armhandle or something. Tad didn’t know, he had stopped listening. He tuned out the fancy Latin conversation and moved his gaze to the window, watching the tree outside ruffle with a small breeze. At least a tree couldn't understand Latin any better than he could. He took a deep breath.

Wait, how many classes was he going to have with Adam Parrish? Armhandle was still distracted with speaking to—surprise, surprise—Adam, Dick, and the Lynch kid, so Tad could swipe his schedule out without too much worry of being seen. He unfolded it from under his desk. If he only had a few classes with him, then that wouldn't be so bad. He didn't mind that they shared Latin class. It didn't matter if Tad was distracted during Latin because he sucked at Latin anyway.

His eyes widened in horror as he read the paper.

He returned his face to the desk.

This was going to be a damn long school year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here I come to find out that there’s literally a tag for Tad Carruthers and how just about everyone mutually agrees he has a crush on Adam Parrish.
> 
> Tad, a guy who only appeared in the entire series for a total of two pages.
> 
> No, wait. I just found his page. He’s literally only in four paragraphs. He’s on a single piece of paper in a 1600+ page series.
> 
> I just love this fandom XD.
> 
> I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this story, but until then, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you all enjoyed Tad Carruthers! 
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	2. Technical Difficulties

  
_“Oh, yes, that—well, there is Richard Gansey the Third,” Calla said, catching sight of him. “And the snake. Where is Coca-Cola?”_

_“Work,” Gansey said. “He couldn’t get off.”_

* * *

  
“Stupid ass car,” Tad accused of the vehicle.

“Stupid ass Carruthers,” his best friend said through the driver's side window.

“Shut up.” He popped the hood and peered inside even though he had no idea what he was looking for. The little orange light that had popped up next to the gas gauge had said _check engine_ , and so he was checking it. The little light hadn’t explained what to do after that.

“Dude,” Laureate called out. He honked the horn and Tad nearly stumbled back into the dirt. Asshole. “Do you even know what you’re looking at?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said, and as a matter of fact, he did.

He was looking at an engine.

After some inconsequential squabbling that filled their time more than anything, Tad got back in the car and they drove to the nearest Jiffy Lube equivalent. 

Someone in a gray jumper instructed them to pull up in one of the garages and wait there. Tad noted the several other vehicles in the other garage; a Toyota, a Pontiac, and a pick-up truck that several other gray jumper people were bustling around. 

Busy day, he thought a bit glumly. He wondered how long he and his best friend would be pinned there for. 

Tad hung out in the car, scrolling through his phone while he waited for another gray jumper person to approach him. He had the insurance card and registration and other important pieces of paper stuffed in his pockets while his friend had walked it to the doughnut shop next door. Tad didn’t think it was a big deal. If they said they needed the owner of the vehicle or whatever then he would just wait for Laureate to get back. He didn’t know why Laureate didn’t just ask him to go get the doughnuts instead, but whatever. He had his backpack in the back seat, so maybe he could do his homework while he was stuck out here.

Or, he thought, he could watch another video on his phone.

He watched another video.

He did reach into his backpack at one point, though, to pull out a bottle of coke. He twisted the cap and enjoyed the hissing sound that came from it, filling the silence. Even with the noises coming from his phone, being the only one to hear it felt very sobering, very alone. 

“Are you the one with the engine—Oh.”

He flicked his eyes up to greet the guy that had come to the open window, and nearly spat Coca-Cola across the dashboard.

_FUCK._

Adam Parrish stared at him from the other side of the window.

Why was Adam Parrish on the other side of the window?

“Oh,” Tad mimicked back, not sure what else to say.

This was not right. This was not okay. Tad had not mentally prepared himself to see that face. He knew he needed at least five minutes to amp himself up and rehearse his words so they didn't fall out of his mouth like a poorly made mixtape but now the world had just sprung a trap on him with zero prep time. 

“You work here?” He asked, because that seemed like a good question to ask. Yeah. Not like Tad could see his work clothes with his name on it or anything.

“Yes,” Adam answered, the word a little cold.

“Cool,” Tad said, because he didn’t know what else to say. 

Several seconds of silence went by. He didn’t know if Adam was uncomfortable with silence, but Tad was slowly withering away from it.

“So,” Adam finally spared him. “Your engine?”

“Right!” Tad latched onto the conversation topic like a life preserver. “This little light keeps popping up telling us to check the engine.”

“Did you find anything wrong with it?”

“Um, well...It wasn’t steaming like it does in the movies or anything.”

“Well,” Adam said, turning to face the car, “at least it’s not doing that.”

With his back turned, Tad took the second to take a deep breath. “Heh. Yeah.”

 _Laureate,_ Tad thought desperately, _get your ass back here and save me._

In all honesty, Tad didn’t know why he was like this. He didn’t know why he was the way he was, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred-sixty-five days of the year, but with Parrish, his perplexity was doubled. His mouth didn’t work properly, his voice cracked, his lungs forgot to breathe on their own, his hands forgot what to do with themselves.

“Aw, shit, Parrish is here,” his body seemed to say. “What do we do, dude?”

Like Tad had any idea.

The only theory he could come up with was the most obvious one: Adam Parrish was amazing, and Tad Carruthers was not.

Laureate had one of those cars that could only open its hood from a button on the inside, so Tad found it and hit it so Adam could prop the hood up and take a look. Tad, not wanting to feel like a static NPC, got out of the car and walked over to his side. He kept his eyes on the engine, using the alibi that he was looking for the problem too rather than looking at anything else besides Parrish, who leaned over the engine with his hands braced on the front of the car. 

He stood back and pushed the bangs out of his face, leaving grease in the flat curls of his hair. 

Tad kept his eyes trained on the engine.

“I’m not seeing anything outright. I’m going to run some scans and we’ll give you a call when we find out what it is. You can wait in the lobby if you like. It’ll probably take less than an hour.”

“Less than an hour." Tad nodded, already envisioning himself running towards the doughnut shop. He would drown his misery in confectionary sugar and make Laureate come fetch the car when it was done. "Great. Awesome. That's just awesome. Here, here's the keys. Good luck." 

Tad exited the garage with two thumbs up before Adam could tell him anything else. As soon as Tad was certain he was out of Parrish’s line of sight, he dashed.

He spent the next hour at the doughnut shop with Laureate, both of them ignoring the homework in their backpacks in favor of literally anything else. Tad didn’t regret that decision, but the next hour was spent miserably anyway. He slumped on the little circular table, decorated to look like a pink doughnut with frosting and sprinkles and confusing Tad about which sprinkles were the ones he had spilt and which were actually a part of the table’s surface.

“Dude,” Laureate said through a mouthful of Belgian cream filling. Half his attention was on his phone, although what he was doing, Tad didn’t ask. “What’s with you?”

“Whaddya mean? I'm not doing anything." 

“That’s precisely what I mean. You’re acting like your hamster just died.”

Tad winced at the thought of anything befalling Cheddars. “Not cool, man. Don’t put that out there.”

His phone rang then, a number Tad didn't recognize but suspected that it was someone from the automotive services he could see through the doughnut shop's windows. He picked it up. 

"Yeah?" he asked wearily. 

His chest gave a painful ache as a partially hidden southern accent came through the phone. “Your car’s done. It looks like your spark plug is in need of a replacement.”

There was something offputting about hearing Adam’s voice through the filter of a phone rather than in person. Tad would have thought that over the phone would have been the easier option, but instead it gave him another wave of unnamed emotions. It felt personal, over the phone. Private, the conversation confined to just the two of them.

For some reason, Laureate decided to take another bite of his doughnut before asking him, "Who's that?" 

“Nobody,” Tad immediately said, before saying to Parrish. “How much is it for a new spark plug?”

“We have the details here, but it looks to be roughly around four-hundred.”

“Oh.” Tad breathed a sigh of relief. “Hell, that ain’t bad.”  
His eyebrows pinched together in confusion at Adam’s lack of a response.

Pressure to fill the silence began to fill Tad again. He said, “Well, sounds great! We’ll be over in, like, ten minutes.”

Like before, Adam’s voice was cold as he said, “There’s someone waiting for you at the front desk.”

Tad winced as Adam unceremoniously hung up on him. He stared down at his phone’s screen, confused and worried.

He must have maintained that confused and worried expression for the next several minutes as he and Laureate gathered their things, hastily swiped sprinkles off the table and onto the floor, and headed back to the automotive shop, because Laureate was giving him his own look the entire time. Eventually, Laureate caved and punched him in the shoulder. 

“Knock it off! You’re stressing me out.”

“First of all, ow.” Tad rubbed his inflicted arm, glare full of betrayal.

His best friend completely lacked sympathy as he shook his head. “That’s what you get for acting stupid.”

“What did I do?” he demanded, a little hurt.

“You’re not telling me what’s wrong.” Laureate shoved his hands into his pockets, full of a confidence Tad could not fathom nor relate to. “So stop being a shithead and just tell me already.”

Tad stared down at their shoes as they walked. If he didn’t know what was wrong, how was he supposed to be expected to _say_ it?

Quickly, before he could get punched again, he narrowed down all of his jumbled thoughts from the past hour into something coherent. 

“Well, Parrish goes to school with us.”

Laureate’s face twisted in confusion and a very clear absence of interest. “So?”

“Isn’t it kind of weird knowing the person who’s, like, working on your car right now?”

“No.”

“You’d make a terrible therapist,” Tad told him, then, “I just wanna thank him, you know? Just, like, something other than _thanks._ ”

“Then do it.”

Tad faltered. “Do what?”

“Do more.”

His best friend made it sound so fucking simple that Tad had the sudden urge to punch him back. “How?”

Laureate stopped walking then, making Tad stop with him and watch in puzzlement as he pulled one of the pink doughnut boxes, partially crushed to make it fit, out of his backpack. He handed it to him and shrugged. 

“Give him a doughnut?” he offered in a tone that suggested that he could care less whether or not Tad decided to do that. It was such a drastic difference from how Tad felt, torn between the horror of actually giving Parrish something tangible or suffering the regret for the rest of the day if he didn’t.

“I can’t do that.”

“For fuck’s sakes—Why not?”

“That’s like, weird, isn’t it? Just, ‘hey, you fixed my car, here’s a doughnut.’ I’m not paying him in doughnuts.”

“You’re not paying him at all. It’s my car. I’m paying for it.”

“Your mom’s paying for it, Laurie.”

He gave another “ow” as Laureate punched him again, this time on the other arm to balance it out.

"Same thing. Just give him the damn confectionery item and call it a day." 

Tad looked at him desperately. “Can’t you give it to him?”

The inhale Laureate took could have filled him enough to make him pop. “You know what, look. His window’s down. Just throw it in his car.”

“What?”

Tad turned to where his best friend pointed in the parking lot of the automotive shop. He had seen Parrish's ugly-ass car there after he had run out of the garage, had noticed that the window was cracked just a bit, maybe to keep it cool for when Adam got into it after his shift. Tad had noticed it but had never considered approaching it. What if someone saw him? What if _Adam_ saw him?

“Uh...”

He dug his heels into the asphalt of the parking lot as Laureate snatched his elbow and dragged him over. His eyes kept flicking to the automotive shop, checking all the heads of all the gray jumper people he could see for any blond ones. Mercifully, all of them were dark-haired, decidedly not Adam people.

At any second, though, and in usual Parrish fashion, that kid could manifest out of nowhere. Tad could feel the pressure, could feel the imaginary timer start ticking for when Adam would inevitably show up, the moment he and Laureate stopped next to the driver’s side door of Adam’s car.

Tad couldn’t help but grimace at the sight of the vehicle. It was, by far, the saddest car anyone drove at the Academy. The average Aglionby student deserved better, let alone Adam Parrish.

“It’s not like he’ll eat some random-ass food he finds in his car,” Tad said when Laureate watched him expectantly.

In response, Laureate promptly ripped open his backpack again and dropped a notebook and a pen on top of the pink box in Tad’s arms.

Tad fumed silently. He should have seen that one coming.

Time was of the essence, standing out in the open with the possibility of Parrish appearing at any second, so Tad shoved the pink box back at Laureate and quickly flipped open the notebook and clicked the pen. He hurried to find a page that wasn't covered in half-hearted math notes and history facts and wrote the first thing that came to mind. 

_Thanks for fixing the car_

Tad glanced worriedly at the page on the other side of his note. Even when Laureate’s writing obviously lacked enthusiasm, his penmanship was eye-catching. His parents had driven into to have not just nice handwriting, but an impressive one. Normally Tad didn't compare the two but suddenly his own simple, average print looked even more average and simple to him. 

“Sign your name.”

Tad looked up, startled. “Why?”

“It’s not like _I_ give a fuck about what Parrish does with my car. Sign your name so he knows it’s from you.”

Tad had been holding out on the hope of keeping their poorly planned Mission Impossible stunt anonymous, but he supposed Adam wouldn't eat anonymously left food either. At the bottom of the note, he wrote _Carruthers_ and left it at that.

He carefully ripped out the note and folded it in two so that the giant piece of paper didn’t look pitiful with only a few words scribbled on it. He picked up one of the doughnuts from the box, a plain one since he didn’t know what Adam would like, and stared at the crack in the window.

The crack was opened just enough that it would fit, which felt a little unfortunate considering that Tad had been hoping that it wouldn’t be so he could use the excuse to not do this.

His tolerance used up, Laureate snatched the doughnut and the note and, before Tad could make a sound of horror, threw it into the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again with Tad Carruthers and shenanigans! I don't how long this story will be, but I'm thinking I'll keep it short and sweet! Writing this almost makes me wish he had more page time in the series. I'm torn between wanting to know more about him and still finding it hilarious that he only got four paragraphs XD
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	3. Churchgoer

_Gansey nodded, once. Twice. “Sorry for keeping you up late. See you tomorrow?”_

_“First thing.”_

_After Gansey had gone, Adam fetched the hidden letter. In it was his father’s rescheduled court date. A remote part of Adam marveled that the mere sight of the words Robert Parrish could twist his stomach in a muddy, homesick way._

Eyes forward, Adam. _Soon it would be behind him. Soon this school year, too, would be behind him. Soon they would find Glendower, soon they would all be kings. Soon, soon._

* * *

  
“Bro,” Tad said, raising his voice in the hopes that it would reach through the phone better. It sat with the passenger seat all to its self, on speaker. He resisted the urge to pick up, even though there were no other vehicles on the road that he could see. “Bro, I’m losing you. My man. Can you hear me?”

No answer.

He blew out a breath. He’d have to call Laureate back once he passed the church. 

That place creeped him out, and not just because it was a church and it was night and there was no one else accompanying him right now, although those were all very valid reasons. It was because every time he passed the place, the reception of his phone just died out. Completely, as though he had entered a tunnel.

Alright, he thought. No big deal. 

Except it was a big deal. Or rather, a medium-sized deal, but his mind was trying hard to convince him that it was much, much bigger. 

His mind made some very convincing points.

He was lost in Henrietta—an absolute embarrassment to befall an Aglionby, one that he would sooner take to the grave than allow anyone at the Academy to every know. He couldn’t imagine anyone getting lost in boring old Henrietta, but he hadn’t anticipated for the whole world to look different at night. He just thought it would look the same but with poorer lighting, but no. It was as though he had entered a warped dimension of the Henrietta he knew in the daylight.

He had a license, but his driving skills were shit.

And now, his phone was down, leaving him completely isolated.

All in all, a very uncomfortable situation. 10/10 would not recommend.

The church came into view. He kept his eyes averted as best he could without taking his eyes off the road.

Eyes forward, he thought. All he had to do was keep his focus on driving. He could do that, he could think about nothing else but the black asphalt in his car’s headlights, his foot on the gas pedal, and how carefully he was trying not to press down harder. 

A car then pulled out in front of him. It was a decent way up the street and going slowly, but Tad gasped as though it had just jumped right in front of him going seventy miles an hour.

He scolded himself for getting so easily spooked, but then his sights flicked to where the car had exited: the parking lot of the church—

He glanced at the dashboard.

—at 12:34 am.

His immediate thoughts went to murderers and he started to panic. He switched his foot from the gas pedal to the break, wondering if he should just turn around. He’d get even more lost by doing so but he’d rather be lost alive than found dead. 

The car then passed beneath a street lamp, illuminating a horrendous orange color.

Dick Gansey, Tad realized with a shaking amount of relief, driving around in his ugly-ass Camaro that he always dragged around for some inconceivable reason that Tad could not fathom. 

He took his foot off the brake and slowly began to pick up speed again. He wondered why Dick Gansey had been at the church, and why so late. He wondered if maybe he should honk, if he should ask for directions. Dick Gansey would give it to him, cordially, and Tad trusted the man's integrity to not start spreading rumors of Tad's incompetence behind the wheel. 

_Dicimus ad te._

Tad blinked. 

_Mago indiget vobis._

He looked through the right window and then the one on his left. He didn’t hear anything from any one direction but still he checked. He checked his dashboard again too, but the radio was off and Tad’s phone wasn’t hooked up to Bluetooth to be able to play any music. His eyebrows furrowed.

_Dicimus ad te._

_Mago indiget vobis._

_Salvator._

Oh, he realized. He was hearing Latin words in his head, on repeat.

He groaned and rolled his neck, as though he could roll those words out of his head. Maybe if he tilted his head to one side, they would fall out.

_Salvator._

Nope. They weren’t falling out. He couldn’t believe it. It had been hours since Latin class and he could still hear words floating around in his head.

In the near distance, he could see that orange car getting onto a different road. Tad didn’t bother turning his blinker on—there was no one on the road to appreciate the fact that he had remembered that from Driver’s Ed—and prepared to turn onto that road too. He had to be quick. If he lost sight of the orange car, then there went his chances of finding his way back to Aglionby, back to his dorm room and back to Laureate.

_Salvator._

God damn, he had only gone back to school that day and already his studies were infecting his head. Soon math equations would start floating across his eyes—

The car turned off.

It turned off, with the keys still in the ignition.

He shrieked and clutched the steering wheel, prepared for the vehicle to veer off and ram a street lamp. His chest ached from how hard his heart was beating even as the car kept moving forward, simply slower, slower and slower still, until it stopped.

He rubbed his chest, bruised with panicked breathing.

He found himself wishing for someone, anyone to be here with him, if only to make him feel better. His face pinched up immediately after that thought.

What was he, eleven? Eleven going on twelve? With more force than necessary, he pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. Even when he opened the door, the lights inside didn’t turn on in response.

He slammed the door behind him. He was an Aglionby. An Aglionby could handle something as mundane as car troubles.

As he rounded the hood of the car, wondering if he should attempt to check the engine or take his phone down the road until reception came back, he halted.

His gaze slowly scanned up the dark, looming image of the church. The nearby street lamp didn’t even reach the building.

He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, thoroughly creeped out. 

He glanced at the car, at its hood and at the driver’s seat. Should he try putting the key back in and seeing what happened? He didn’t know anything about cars, though. Turning it off and on again was the extent of his mechanical abilities.

He glanced down the road but then cringed. It was dark, the street lamps spaced way too far apart for his comfort, and he was alone, Dick Gansey probably several miles away by now.

Tad brightened then with the remembrance of Dick Gansey.

Hesitantly, he glanced back at the church.

Dick had just come from there, and so, despite its appearances, it couldn’t have been all bad.

He reminded himself of that as he took his useless phone and useless keys. He reminded himself as he kept his gaze on his shoes as he walked up the sidewalk and then the stairs, as he raised a hand and knocked on the giant wooden doors, as the echoing knocks made his insides shake. 

No one answered. He would have loved to have decided, oh well, he should just leave, but that left him with no more options other than waiting in his car until sunrise.

He tried knocking a few more times, suffering the echoes that came with it, but still, no one answered. As he turned around to hurry back to his car and hide in the backseat, his gaze swept over some stairs off to the side of the building.

Ah, he thought. He bet Dick had gone up those stairs, the ones that looked like a fire escape. Dick Gansey was eccentric like that. As Tad rounded the church and squinted up the stairs, he spotted a door up on the second floor. He grinned a little as it looked like he had won the bet.

The grin didn’t last long, however, as he began making his way up the slight wooden steps. The more steps he scaled, the closer he came to the door, the less light seemed to reach that part of the church. The street lamps were so far, a distant speck of wavering, hopeful light, too far to give him any comfort or hope. They could only show him what that comfort and hope would look like if he had been under it.

Oh, wait. He had a flashlight on his phone.

Turning it on didn't little to ease his nerves. If anything, he wished he hadn't remembered it. Seeing the harsh light, illuminating only a circle of the area in front, gave him a sense of foreboding. Seeing the details of the door as he pointed his phone at it, while the area outside the circle of light remained shadowed and obscure, created a scene right out of a horror flick Laureate had made them watch last Halloween. The unsteady light from his unsteady grip also didn't help. 

Breaths shallow as he raised his fist, he knocked on the door. Surely any person Dick Gansey would be associated with would be someone of the gentlemen quality. Surely not of the murdering quality.

He still jumped as the door began to open. He scrunched up the bottom of his shirt, trying to press down the urge to bolt back down the stairs. Where would he even run to, the car? The car that doesn’t work? The murderer would follow him there.

As the door pulled back to reveal a well-lit room, two blue eyes blinked at him, eyes that Tad did not expect to see here in this place, in these circumstances.

“Oh,” Adam Parrish said.

“Oh,” Tad said back. He stopped himself from apologizing for the intrusion and walking away because, well, Tad needed to intrude at the moment.

“What are you doing here?” Adam said in a slow, controlled manner, as though obligated to ask that and not simply shut the door and pretend that no one had knocked on it.

"What are you doing here?" Tad asked back. His vocabulary had abandoned him and now he was forced to resort to stealing Adam's words. 

“I live here,” he answered plainly.

“Here?” Now his vocabulary was limited to stealing only portions of Adam's words. Tad thought numbly to himself that this was what de-evolution felt like. 

“Yes,” Adam answered, still with simple phrases, still much more clear and constructed than Tad was managing.

Tad gave himself a second to let this new information sink in. Adam lived in there, behind those walls, and the idea felt so surreal that Tad had to restrain himself from leaning to the side to take get a look of the inside the room.

He moved his gaze around to the rest of the building, to the outside walls and the stairs. Finally, he managed to say an original sentence. “I thought this was a church.”

“It is.”

“Why do you live at a church?

He watched as those same blue eyes narrowed on him.

This was why Tad didn’t talk to Adam for longer than ten seconds. It never ended well.

“How about I ask you why you're here?”

“Oh. Yeah, right. That.” Tad looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t see his car from where he stood, but he could imagine its sad little image, powerless on the side of the road. As close to the side of the road as Tad had managed to push it, that was. He hoped any people who happened to be driving out past midnight drove around it.

He looked back at Adam. He shrugged and tried for a smile.

“Car troubles again. Lucky thing I found you here, huh?”

Adam looked at him strangely. “Your spark plug should have been fine until you got a replacement.”

“Oh, no. It just turned off.”

“What turned off?”

“The whole damn car!” Tad waved his arms in an arc for emphasis. “It just decided to stop working in the middle of the road!”

Adam still didn't look any happier, but Tad also thought he didn't look surprised, either. 

“I think I know what’s wrong with it.”

“You do?” Tad asked, taken aback. “Already? Hot damn, man, you are the shit!”

This was just further proof of what Tad already knew, that Adam was the best thing to walk the halls of Aglionby, except now he was also the best thing to walk the garages of that automotive shop he worked at. He hadn’t even seen the car yet and could already diagnose what was wrong with it with Tad’s short description. 

He grinned, feeling a prideful despite knowing that Adam wouldn’t care if Tad felt proud of him or not. Parrish was too advanced to need the pride of someone else to feel good about himself, but Tad felt it anyway. Anything Parrish wanted to be, he wanted to be the very best at it.

Student at Aglionby? The best. Mechanic? The best.

Adam shook his head, not at all fazed by Tad’s excitement. “Let me go grab some...things, and I’ll fix your car.”

Tad’s grin faltered as he imagined getting into the car, preparing to drive off with a vague idea of where to go as he waved goodbye to Adam Parrish.

From Tad’s perspective, he had two choices: 

Drive off into the dark unknown of Henrietta, risking a possible third breakdown from the car in the same twenty-four hours and ending up stranded in the middle of the night.

Or.

He could stay here. It was safe here. Safe and warm and well lit and there was Adam Parrish.

And there was _Adam Parrish—_

“Can I stay here?”

“What?”

"Here," he blurted, before the sudden burst of courage slipped from his hands. “With you, you know, for tonight? Just for tonight. ‘Cause it’s so late and...stuff.”

For the first time. Adam looked more bemused than Tad himself usually felt during the occasions they interacted with each other. He took it as a win.

After a couple of long, ticking seconds, Adam sighed. 

“Sure.”

Tad felt his eyes widen without his permission. “Really?”

As a kid, he had teamed up with Laureate to beg their parents for sleepovers, had been invited to pool parties by the cool kids who got Caprisuns in their lunch boxes, and when older had been dragged along to movies by his fellow Aglionbies. He knew those feelings, that elated happiness of seeking a good time, but this felt different. Tad couldn’t explain it, but it was like those feelings except...sharper.

Tad couldn't stop the excitement causing his heart to beat faster, nor could he stop the jitteriness of his hands. They appeared to him as rather conflicting messages but all the same, he said to Adam, “Sweet.”

Adam stepped aside to allow him in, eyeing him warily as Tad crossed the threshold. Tad didn't know if it was those intense eyes on him, so close as he squeezed in through the tight door space, or the church itself, but a shiver went down his neck and spine. It wasn't entirely unpleasant. 

“I can’t believe you live here, man,” he said, turning a full circle to take in everything the room had to offer. He grinned at it all. It had all of the standoffish charm that Adam carried around with him throughout the day. “And you get it all to yourself.”

The ceiling wasn’t simply flat across the top, because those were normal people’s kind of ceilings. No, Adam needed one that was shaped like an uneven triangle.

He could see little bits of Adam’s personality strewn around the room. Clear plastic bins held a lot of things, showcasing the books he had and the clothes he wore when he wasn’t in his uniform. Tad spotted a pair of cargo pants and wished he could see Adam in those instead of his uniform or work jumper, something that he could choose to wear for a change.

Although now he had seen Adam in pajamas, if he could count that shirt and those sweatpants as pajamas. It almost felt like collecting a card set, seeing which version of Adam he could add to it. Aglionby Adam was the most common—everyone had that card, and Mechanic Adam was less common. Pajama Adam had to be rare then. He seriously doubted that many people at Aglionby had that card.

Except Dick Gansey.

Tad didn’t know why he bristled. He didn’t even like collecting cards.

He forgot those lines of thought when he stepped on a piece of paper.

“Oh, hey. Dropped your mail.” He picked the envelope off the floor and held it out to him. It looked important, like something Adam wouldn’t want to lose.

From the way Adam snatched it out of his hand, Tad could confirm that suspicion.

“Woah. Hey, dude, I was just—”

“Don’t.”

Tad lost his voice at Parrish’s tone.

“Touch anything.”

“Sounds good,” Tad said in a small voice.

He wrung his hands and stood off to the side while Adam stuffed the letter behind a shelf by the door. Tad didn't ask why he was putting it there, and he wondered if the absence of that question was louder than the question itself, because Adam softened his voice then. 

“You can have the bed,” he said, a sort of apology.

“What? Bro, I’m not stealing your bed. The floor looks plenty comfy. Look at all the spiders. They’ll keep me company. We’ll tell each other stories, share secrets. By morning, we’ll be a close as brothers, you just watch.”

Adam massaged his forehead while Tad hurriedly unzipped his crew team jacket and threw it on the floor, laying across it and placing his chin on his folded arms.

“Tad Carruthers, little buddy, what’s shaking?” he greeted the nearest spider.

It scuttled away.

“Fucking rude.”

He jumped as suddenly an armful of fabric plopped in front of his face. He sat up as he picked through several layers of old blankets and towels.

“I don’t have anything better,” Adam said, more mumbled than his usual crisp, posh taste.

“Better than sleeping in my car.” Tad rolled up his jacket to use as a pillow. He flopped onto his back and folded his arms behind his head as he said, “Out there in Murderville. I still can’t believe you live all the way out here by yourself. Are you, like, religious or something?”

“No.”

Tad burst out laughing, entertained by the answer.

Adam perched on the edge of his bed and looked down on him peculiarly. It reminded Tad of the ravens he would sometimes see around Henrietta, leaning over their perches from above to observe and judge the strange occupants of their town as they scurried about the sidewalks and roads.

“Why’d you leave a doughnut in my car?”

Tad blinked.

Well, shit.

“Oh, that?” he laughed again, now full of nerves and entirely forced. It sounded nothing of his real laugh and he fretted that Adam would be able to recognize that despite the fact that they never spent any time together. “I dunno, just felt like it.”

He had hoped Adam had lost interest when he began rustling through some things on top of the plastic bin beside the bed, but then he held up a familiar scrap of paper for Tad to see. 

“Just felt like leaving me a note? You could have just told me in person.”

It was though Adam had just found his self-conscious button and had curiously decided to push it.

What Tad wanted to know was where the fuck the off button was.

“Yeah, but...”

Think faster, Carruthers. Think fast, _think fast!_

“But this is way cooler.”

Tad did a mental touchdown. _Nice recovery._

Adam returned his gaze to the paper. "Can't argue with that logic." 

He then placed it back on the plastic bin.

Watching Adam do that, placing it on top of a plastic bin rather than tossing it into the other plastic bin nearby that was clearly meant for trash, made a smile break across Tad's face. 

That paper, with those words Tad himself had written on it, would still be there in the morning for Parrish to see, and it would still be there for however long Parrish decided to keep it around for. A little piece of Carruthers in a world of Parrish, even if it was as slight as a piece of paper. It made Tad want to write another one, if he could ever gather the nerve.

Then a thought occurred to him.

“Doesn’t Dick live in that old warehouse?”

Adam glanced over curiously. “Monmouth Manufacturing.”

“Yeah, that place. So what was he doing here?” Seeing the expression that crossed Parrish’s face, he added. “I saw him before my car decided to peace out on me.”

Adam looked elsewhere, at some spot on the wall. “He was just visiting.”

“At, like, midnight?”

Although his sight was still focused on that spot, Tad could see that cold look surfacing on his face, the one that warned that Tad was beginning to enter dangerous, unknown waters. “Yes.”

Not wanting to make him uncomfortable, Tad answered with a simple, “Oh.”

After a beat of silence, Adam reached for the lamp.

“Going to bed already?”

Adam turned off the lamp.

“Ah, okay. Uh, well, sleep well then.”

There was too much silence, way too much when Tad knew there were both still awake. He needed something to wrap up their night’s worth of conversation with.

He twiddled his thumbs, then pulled the blanket over his head before giving a quiet, “Thanks for letting me stay the night. Um, night.”

He buried his head into his makeshift pillow and pretended he didn’t say anything, but then blinked his eyes back open when he heard a response.

"You're welcome...Good night." 

Tad couldn’t explain why that made him so happy, but he grinned into the pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get to re-read Blue Lily, Lily Blue over and over while I'm writing this and it's the best excuse to read it ever <3
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed the new chapter today! 
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	4. Three-Eyed, Two-Beaked, Flying White People Eater

_"Aglionby is kind of pointless for people like us."  
_

_"What is 'people like us'?"_

_"I'm not going to use it," Ronan said, "to get some job with a tie—" He made a hanging motion above his neck, head tilted. "And you can find a way to make the ley line work for you since you've already bargained with it."_

_Adam retorted, "What's it you see me doing right now? Where is it we even are?"_

_"Insultingly close to that Toyota is where_ I _am."_

 _"I'm at work._ _Two hours from now, I'm going to my next job for another four hours. If you're trying to convince me that I don't need Aglionby after I have_ killed _myself over it for a year, you're wasting your breath. Be a loser if you want to, but don't make me a part of it to make yourself feel better."_

_Ronan’s expression was cool over the top of the Pontiac. “Well,” he said, “fuck you, Parrish.”_

_Adam just looked at him witheringly. “Do your homework.”_

_“Whatever. I’m getting out of here.”_

* * *

_tck-tck-tck-tck_

Tad glanced out at the dark of the windshield and frowned. He didn’t see anything.

_tck-tck-tck-tck_

Weird.

He shrugged and quickly forgot about it. It was probably pebbles getting kicked up from the wind and hitting the street signs he passed.

It was late again, and he was driving again, but it wasn't his fault. Normally Laureate drove since it was Laureate's car, but his best friend had been pissed at him all day. Apparently, he had been up all night wondering why Tad wasn't answering his phone, which Tad had explained that he couldn't since Adam's place had shit reception.

“Why the hell were you at Parrish’s place?”

And boom, Laureate had stopped talking to him.

Tad wasn’t overly concerned. Laureate’s parents wrote scripts for plays and theaters across the states. Naturally, they had gifted their son with the flare for the dramatics.

Meanwhile, Tad’s parents were hippies who had inherited money from Tad’s non-hippie grandparents. Therefore, they refused to buy Tad a car because riding a bike to school or carpooling was “healthier for the environment,” so now he was forced to ask his best friend for his car when all he wanted was chips from a local gas station.

_tck-tck-tck-tck_

He cringed irritably. The noises outside grated on his already grated nerves. After thinking about his parents and best friend, anymore grating would break through his nervous system. 

He tried to drown out the sounds outside the car with the crunching of chips. He noticed crumbs falling onto the seat and trickling down near the pedals by his feet. His affection for his best friend warred with his irritation over whether or not he should leave them there. 

Headlights caught him off guard as a car zipped by in front of him, startling him enough to drop a chip. With the speed of the car, they wouldn’t have collided, but Tad didn’t appreciate the sudden kick to his heart rate.

He glanced up and gritted his teeth at the very obvious red light the car had flown under. He slammed on the horn.

“Watch it, asshole!” The windows were up, and even if he had rolled them down the car was moving too quickly to hear him, but it made him feel better.

Many Aglionbies were common offenders of the speed limit, so it wasn’t until the car passed underneath a street lamp that he recognized the charcoal gray of a BMW.

 _Lynch,_ Tad realized unhappily. The scary one, since the boring one drove a Volvo and the happy one didn’t drive at all. Tad wondered how long it would be until he saw police lights appear, but the BMW disappeared further down the road within seconds.

He would have wondered what the Lynch was doing out so late, except time didn’t apply to the Lynch. He drove at all times of the day, but even more frequently at night, so instead Tad wondered what he was doing around here. What was here that would warrant the Lynch's attention?

While Tad was distracted with glaring in the direction the car had gone, something large and white swept overhead. He noticed it at the furthermost tip of the windshield before it disappeared over the top of his car. 

He leaned forward to try to find it again. A flag? 

_tck-tck-tck-tck_

Maybe it happened to be the thing making that annoying sound, but he couldn’t figure out how a flag—

Compared to the kick to his heart earlier, what flew out in front of him stabbed his heart with a blade forged from the fear of nightmares.

His car shuddered as a creature out of an acid trip landed in the road ahead.

_“HOLY SHIT.”_

Tad smashed his foot into the brakes.

It was a monster, huge like a monster would be, towering over his vehicle. It turned its head as it heard tires screeching, not acting at all concerned at the possibility of getting hit. Tad saw three red eyes fall on him. He saw two beaks, side by side, open and shut.

The monster’s eyes followed him as he crashed his car into the corner of a dumpster. It then flew off.

Tad watched it in the rearview mirror until it disappeared in the night sky, then he returned his focus to the wheel, to where his hands gripped it fiercely. He sat there, breathing heavily.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there. No small feat of time, he imagined.

When sensation came back to his hands, he broke them out of their frozen state. He had enough sense left to feel the trembling, to see the trembling as he pried them off the steering wheel. He took each movement one step at a time.

Reach for the door, grip the door, unlock the door, then open. Now he had to move his legs, one leg and then the next, to shift his body to get out of the car. He forgot to unbuckle the seatbelt. After he was jerked back, he unbuckled the seatbelt. He placed one foot on the ground outside, then the other, and stood. He let the door fall shut behind him and leaned back against it. A shuddering breath shook him inside and out.

Dazed, he stumbled through the parking lot, not sure what he was looking for. Help? A nearby vending machine? He could use a soda, or even just a water.

Then his eyes fell on a single car under a street lamp. It was an ugly car.

Rubbing his hands up and down his arms, he lifted his gaze to the nearest building. After a moment of squinting, he recognized it.

_Knock knock knock_

Numbly, Tad thought he could have sought out a door to knock on rather than the immense garage doors, but he hadn’t felt brave enough for some venturing. He counted himself lucky that he wasn’t nonsensically knocking on the concrete portion of the walls and expecting someone to open that.

Instead of the garage door pulling open, a nearby wooden door did.

“Who’s there?”

Tad sucked in a breath.

_Parrish._

Though he could only make out the silhouette of a person, dark against the dim light pouring out of the door behind him, the voice was unmistakably Adam Parrish. It was not the loud, obnoxious, clear in its arrogance voice of the average Aglionby. It was soft, hesitant, with a poorly hidden Southern accent, just a tinge that Parrish hadn’t figured out how to snuff out yet. 

For a brief, relieving moment, he felt better. Adam Parrish was here, and good things could only happen when Adam Parrish was near.

Then fear sliced through his little moment of comfort.

“Get inside!”

“What?”

From how nonfunctional he had been operating seconds before, Tad shocked himself with how quickly he closed the distance. Adam withdrew inside and went to slam the door shut, probably thinking he was about to get attacked by some drunkard when Tad skidded into the light. 

Even in the dark, Tad saw his eyes widen in surprise.

“Carruthers—” 

Adam didn’t quite get to finish as he watched Tad skid into the hard material of the doorframe and cringed at the sound the impact made.

Tad ignored the bloom of pain in his shoulder and arm and disconnected himself from the doorframe. “Inside! Get! Hurry!”

“But why—”

Tad shoved him inside and slammed the door behind them.

“Is there a lock for this thing?” he asked frantically. There was the standard lock in the doorknob, which he hastily turned, but he doubted that would keep out a three-eyed, two-beaked, albino bird the size of a…

Of a…

Tad didn’t know what to compare it to. It was bigger than a polar bear but smaller than a T-rex.

It was as if it was its own creation, some hideous, horrific creation of God, sent to punish Carruthers for some crime he had committed in a past life. 

_“Tad.”_

He jumped. He hadn’t realized that Adam had been repeating his last name until he had uttered his first. Adam had never said his first name.

This was the first time.

Tad felt his face burning. He wondered if it was a sign of an upcoming meltdown.

He better not have a meltdown. Adam Parrish was standing right there in front of him, staring him down as though caught between peeved and confused. If Tad started flailing or shaking or, God forbid, crying in front of him, then he would march right back outside and call for that thing to come and end him.

“Whatever this is, I don’t have time for it. I’m on the clock right now.”

Tad felt too unnerved to connect the dots right away. “Clock?”

Adam narrowed his eyes as though he believed Tad was messing with him. When he realized he wasn’t, he sighed and gestured to the inside of the building.

“Can’t you see I’m working?”

Tad glanced at the garage, cold and harsh and littered with hazardous appliances if one didn't know how to use them. Then he noticed Adam’s gray jumper, the name _Parrish_ prettily spelt in cursive but colored in an ugly yellow across his single shirt pocket.

Mechanic Adam, the uncommon version of him. Tad made an “ah” sound and nodded.

“If something’s happened to your car again, this place is closed. You’ll have to come back in the morning.” Adam went to reach behind him and unlock the door. “So why don’t you—”

Tad slammed his hand against the door, fingers splayed across the wood, expression, he hoped, incredibly dire. 

“You can’t!” Perhaps not dire. To his ears, he sounded more under the category “hysterical.” “There’s this _thing_ out there.”

Adam blinked several times, a bit startled by the intensity.

Worried he wasn’t going to be believed, he continued, “There was this thing, man. A thing. A big thing. It, it, it _flies_ —”

A strange look came over Adam, one that Tad didn’t have a name for. 

“What did it look like?” he asked.

Tad tried to think, finding it awfully hard at that moment. “It was…” 

_It was huge. It was monstrous. It had two beaks and three eyes and wings the size of sails._

Tad fidgetted horribly with the sleeves of his crew team jacket. He decided to go with, “...It was white.”

Miraculously, that seemed enough to appease Adam. He nodded as though that solved a puzzle he had been putting together during the length of their conversation, a puzzle that Tad didn’t know the picture of.

Then he told him, “Don’t worry about it.”

Tad stared at him blankly. “Don’t worry about it?”

“Exactly.” Adam made to turn away. “You’ll be fine. Go ahead and go back—”

Tad caught him off guard with a blankly stated, “Dude.”

He had been fretting that Adam would think he was outlandish, possibly on drugs, and yet Adam had both accepted and brushed off the possibility of a monster and then told Tad, a recent victim of its existence, not to worry about it.

He scratched his head, dumbfounded. “You’re too hardcore. I mean, sure, you can be badass all you wanna be, but you can still die.”

Adam sighed as though he found that mildly inconvenient. “Don’t I know it.”

Tad discerned that reply as fairly concerning.

“Well, let’s...not die, then.” He began fidgetting with his sleeves again. “So, like...it’d be better not split up, don’t you think?”

Adam faced him again. He didn’t lean against the wall and he didn’t cross his arms, but Tad still felt the expectancy of someone posed like that would have given.

He looked down at his shoes. “Look, can you drop me off at Aglionby? I kinda...totalled my car out there and I...I, um...”

_And if I face that thing again I don’t want to be alone._

Tad watched as Adam took such a deep breath it looked like he was trying to fill his chest enough to float away.

Tad felt his own chest fill with something else, a light feeling, a mixture of surprise and joy as Adam said, “I can as soon as I'm done.”

“Really?” He let out an uneven breath, relieved. He glanced around the spacious, vacant garage, nothing to warrant for company aside three old vehicles and a radio with scratchy music playing. “You here all by yourself?”

“I am.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“Most nights, no.”

“Wow,” was all he said. He surveyed the place, understanding that it would have bothered him endlessly to be alone, with nothing but his thoughts...and the knowledge of that creature outside.

Adam, though, turned around to return to his business as though he would at any other time, no threat of a nightmarish creature halting him from getting his work done. 

The best, Tad thought. The best at school, the best on the job. A monster could appear and if Adam was working, he would simply ignore it. He imagined if the monster had interrupted his studying, and Tad was willing to bet the monster would have been found dead the next morning, all three of its red eyes gauged out by the pencil of a sleep-deprived student.

Adam stopped at a nearby table, covered in many items Tad didn’t know the purpose of. “I need to finish this before I lock up.” Adam motioned to one of the three vehicles with a wrench. “You can wait in the break room until then."

Tad caught a bright splash of color on the floor, awfully noticeable in the otherwise drab shades of the garage. He walked over to the car Adam must have been working on, a Pontiac with its hood propped open, and found a trio of cards next to one of its wheels.

A trio of some very weird fucking cards, Tad thought as he picked them up. They were nothing like playing cards, much too large, with no numbers or suits to be seen. Instead, strange and wondrous illustrations stared back at him.

A skull with a crown, what Tad thought looked like a bunch of trees, and a hauntingly creepy red mask. 

_Death, the Empress, the Devil._

They had to be Adam’s. They were peculiar, like him.

“Cool cards, bro. You collect them?”

Adam had been sifting through a toolbox but then jumped and spun around as though stung. “What? No. Hand those back.”

Tad didn’t say anything, just held out his hand as Adam swiped them back with the same ferocity he had with the letter the other night at his apartment. He shrugged. He guessed Adam was just one of those people who valued his things.

Adam pointed firmly. “Break room’s that way.”

The break room was tiny but nice. He made himself a hot chocolate with the Keurig on the counter, sipping it as he curled up on one of the semi-comfortable chairs. He picked the one closest to the window in the wall, peeking over the bottom of it as he watched Adam lean into the engine of the Pontiac. He had a grease smudge across one side of his cheek and plenty more down his jumper. 

Tad pressed his face into the top of the backseat of the chair, watching. He didn’t know why, but he felt completely content to do this. It reminded him not of watching a tv show, but more of watching a scene in nature, a pretty bird landing in a branch overhead, pretty enough to stop and admire.

He jumped as his phone dinged.

_Hey, you okay?_

He smiled down at Laureate’s message.

He thought about his friend’s question and considered the right answer. Was he okay? Replaying the events of the night, it seemed not.

He glanced up at a clank from the garage. Adam stepped down to pick up a tool that had slipped from his hands, probably because he was slicked with grease from head to toe.

Tad pressed his face back into the chair and grinned.

 _Yep! Got your chips too._

_Thx_

_Np_

_How come you've been gone so long?_

_Bumped into Parrish on the way back_

Tad waited for a reply. When he didn’t get one after three minutes, he stuffed the phone back into his pocket and decided to watch Adam do his thing. It was interesting, seeing someone work on the inner mechanisms of a vehicle. It was not like playing a trumpet or rowing a boat or pulling back the strings of a bow, all skills among Aglionbies. This was unique, and a hell of a lot more helpful. Tad couldn't use his talent as an oarman to fix Laureate's car.

“Alright, grab your things.” Adam’s voice echoed across the garage. “We’re leaving.”

“Grabbing," Tad called back. There wasn't much to do except down the rest of his hot chocolate and throw it into the trash can, so he did that quickly and met Adam back in the garage as he was placing tools back into a complicated-looking toolkit, with several drawers that folded open when he lifted the top. When he snapped it shut, he picked up a dirty cloth on the counter next to it, wiping his hands and the back of his neck before throwing it into a bucket with other similarly dirty cloths. 

“Ready?” Adam asked a tone that didn’t suggest that he cared much if Tad was or not.

Tad was happy to say he was ready—there wasn’t much readying to do, besides amping himself up to step outside the safety of the building—but then he noticed that Adam wasn’t quite ready. He frowned, then picked up the same cloth that had just been thrown.

“Hold up.” 

Adam stiffened, startled and unhappy about it, as Tad grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

Tad grinned and pointed to his own face. “It’s like you got war paint on.”

Adam narrowed his eyes, the same suspicion as before, as though Tad was messing with him. “What are—”

Tad lifted the cloth and wiped away at the grease smudge that had taken up the entire right side of Adam’s face. It took him several swipes, proving to Tad that grease did not come off as easily as commercials had convinced him. He took care around his eye, imagining that such a substance in the eyes would definitely not feel comfortable.

“There, all done.” He crumpled up the cloth and shot it back into the bucket. He swiped the excess off his hands as he went for the door. “Okay, we can go now.”

He took a couple of steps and realized that Adam wasn't following behind him. He glanced back to where he was still standing, staring at a point on the floor. Tad looked at that spot but found nothing interesting about it. 

“You still have something you need to do?”

“No,” Adam instantly replied. He started walking and passed Tad. “It’s time to go. Let’s go.”

“Cool,” Tad agreed and rushed up to match his step. 

He waited until Adam had flicked the lights off and locked the door behind them before saying anything more. As they walked across the parking lot, to the ugly old car underneath the street lamp, Tad noticed he barely felt any worry over strolling out in the open. He didn’t know if it was because he had someone with him, or if it was because that someone was Adam, but he felt braver, more capable.

He imagined cracking his knuckles and telling that monster bird to fuck off if it were to suddenly appear again.

“What kind of cards were those?” he asked conversationally. It had been on his mind since he’d seen them, and he doubted he’d get another opportunity to ask. Adam had a tendency to disappear as much as he randomly appeared. “They looked weird.”

Adam glanced at him uneasily. “Nothing, just cards.”

“They seemed kinda important to you,” Tad pointed out. “What, is it a secret? I can keep a secret.”

“Tarot cards.” By his tone, Tad could tell he was hoping that the answer would shut him down. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Adam was quite correct about that, as Tad’s mind had nothing to offer up.

“Help me understand, then,” he suggested. “Is it a card game? I’d totally play, and I wouldn’t tell anybody about it either. Some people just don’t appreciate card games.”

“No.” Adam slowed a little in his pace, considering. "They allow me to perceive possible outcomes." 

Since that answer did nothing to help, Tad stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

Adam inhaled. “They help me see the future.”

Tad felt the air rush out of him in a gasp. “Like a _wizard?”_

Adam exhaled, sighing.

“Tell my future, man!” Tad stopped in front of him, hands clasped together. “Are my parents gonna get me a car or what?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Adam began, blandly, as though he had expected this. “The cards help tell what future events might happen, based on which paths you’re on now.”

“Meaning…?”

He shook his head, eyes not meeting his. “I told you, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Well, no one understands a subject after two minutes! Except you, maybe. Give me an example! What better way to learn than an example? Come on, man, I wanna see!” Tad hopped up next to him. “Show me! I’ll be really good about it, I promise.”

Milky blue eyes leveled him with a glare, but Tad thought he saw a tinge of interest there. Tad felt his eyes cross as Adam held up a single finger. “Once. I can show you once, and then we forget about this. Got it?”

Adam took a step back as Tad made a fist and knocked it against his chest twice, then onto the back of his other fist. “May the waters judge my vow.”

Tad waited for Adam to roll his eyes or something. Instead, he observed him in complete silence, looking so fucking puzzled it offended Tad to a tremendous degree.

He held up his arms in shock. “Dude, it’s the crew team promise.”

Adam didn’t look any less puzzled.

“Dick Gansey used to be the crew team captain!” he reminded him, exasperated. “You telling me he never made you that promise?”

Adam side-eyed him as though the idea was absurd. “No.”

Tad felt a wave of disappointment in Richard Campbell Gansey the Third. He spun around to show off his crew team jacket, the name _Carruthers_ and the number _13_ printed proudly in bold letters across his back. He lifted his arms above his head and pointed at it with his thumbs.

“Means that if I lie, may the waters make me suffer for it.”

He looked over his shoulder and beamed at the expression on Adam’s face.

“I like that promise.”

“It’s killer, right?” He turned around. “Okay, now show me.”

Adam pulled the deck of cards out of his pocket with smooth familiarity. He shuffled them quickly, glancing up at Tad momentarily, and then returning his attention back to the cards. 

“Now, I’m going to pull a card out. Just one,” he swore, eyeing Tad in a way that promised that was all he was going to get. “Then you can help me understand what the card is telling us.”

“I can help?” Tad perked up.

Adam rolled his eyes and then, suddenly deciding, flipped around the card at the top of the pile.

Tad crowded closer to him. “What’s it saying?”

Adam was strangely unresponsive.

Tad accepted the fact that he was acting stupid again. Of course, Adam couldn't tell him what the card was, since they weren't close enough to the street lamp yet to make out the images. Tad pulled his phone out of his pocket, hit the flashlight button, and shone it onto the card. 

Two deer took up the space of the card. No, wait, two elk. One all white, one all black, with the back of their heads pressed together, noses pointed to the sky, antlers intertwining.

“Looks cool,” Tad said, then his eyes scanned the words at the bottom and his face immediately scrunched up. “The Lovers? What the hell?”

Adam made a choked noise, obviously just as confused.

“Not doubting your future-telling powers, man, but I think you got the wrong card. I don’t even have a girlfriend.” Realizing how lame that sounded, he straightened his back and quickly added, “I mean, I could, but I decided not to...for reasons. Because, you know, being part of the crew team already takes up so much of my time—”

“Why?” Adam murmured.

“What?” Tad leaned in again. “Is it telling you something?”

Adam stuffed the card back into his pocket with the rest of the deck. “No.”

Tad considered. “Wait, was the card for you, or was it for me? Maybe it was for you." He lightly nudged Adam in the ribs with his elbow and winked. "Betcha you have a girlfriend. What's her name? What is she on a scale of one to ten?" 

“Blue would kill you if she heard this right now."

“What?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said as though he had said that first. “Not anymore.”

“Oh,” Tad said. He looked off into the distance, the darkness of Henrietta, considering. “Well, in that case, it looks like your card was wrong about both of us.”

“Yes,” Adam agreed whole-heartedly. “It was wrong.”

Tad agreed back with a simple, “Cool.”

Adam unlocked his car and Tad slipped into the passenger seat. The interior proved to be just as unappealing as the exterior, with rips in the seats and a cracked dashboard completely undeserving of Adam Parrish.

He noticed something sitting in the driver’s seat and picked it up before Adam sat on it.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“What’s what?” Adam asked, uninterested before his gaze flicked up. “What is that?”

“Didn’t I just ask you that?” Tad held up the object to feeble, dying cab light above their heads. It was a small white plastic container. “So you don’t know why this was in your car?”

Adam quirked an eyebrow. “I’ve been finding a lot of things in my car lately.”

Tad pretended not to notice how hot his face felt then.

 _“Manibus,”_ he read the writing on the bottom. _“For your hands?”_

He glanced at Adam’s hands then.

“Damn, man.” He held Adam’s hand up to the horrible excuse for a source of light. He had to hold it up high to verify what he thought he’d seen in the dark. “Your hands are all sorts of fucked up.”

Adam looked at him witheringly. “Thanks.”

“Nah, dude. That’s how a mechanic’s hands are supposed to look.” He popped open the lid. A smooth, colorless cream filled the inside. “But now that you’re off work, we can fix that.”

He scooped up a toothbrush worthy amount onto two fingers. He slid it across the knuckles of the hand he was holding, then rubbed it in with his thumb. He did the same with Adam’s other hand next.

“There!” He said when he was done, twisting the lid back on. “Now your hands don’t look like shit.”

“...Thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN AND DIA DE MUERTOS, MY FRIENDS <3
> 
> I hope you all had a fabulous time these past few days and that you’ve enjoyed this chapter!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	5. Keeping It Casual

  
_“I’ll sign, but I want to be exempted from nominations.” Gansey accepted a pen. “My plate’s full.”_

_Henry rubbed his hands together. “Sure thing, old man. Parrish?”_

_Adam merely shook his head. He did it in a remote, cool way that didn’t invite Henry to ask again._

_Henry said, “Lynch?”_

_Ronan flicked his gaze from Adam to Henry. “I thought you said I didn’t have a soul.”_

_He didn’t look at all Aglionby just then, with his shaved head and black biker jacket and expensive jeans. He looked altogether very grown-up. It was, Gansey thought, as if time had carried Ronan a little more swiftly than the rest of them this summer._

Who are these two? _Gansey wondered._ What are we doing?

_“It turns out politics have already eroded my principles,” Henry said._

_Ronan selected a large-caliber marker and leaned deep over the petition. He wrote ANARCHY in enormous letters and then tossed the instrument of war at Henry’s chest._

_“Hey!” Henry cried as the marker bounced off him. “You_ thug.”

_“Democracy’s a farce,” Ronan said, and Adam smirked, a private, small thing that was inherently exclusionary. An expression, in fact, he could’ve very well learned from Ronan._

_Gansey spared Henry a pitying glance. “Sorry, he didn’t get enough exercise today. Or there’s something wrong with his diet. I’ll take him away now.”_

_“When I get elected president,” Henry told Ronan, “I’m making your face illegal.”_

_Ronan’s smile was thin and dark. “Litigation’s a farce.”_

_As they headed back down the shadowed colonnade, Gansey asked, “Do you ever consider the possibility that you be might be growing up to be an asshole?”_

_Ronan kicked a piece of gravel. It skittered across the bricks in front of them before skipping off into the grassy courtyard. “Rumor has it that his father gave him a Frisker for his birthday and he’s too afraid to drive it. I want to see it if he has it. Rumor has it he biked here.”_

_“From Vancouver?” Adam asked._

_Gansey frowned as a pair of impossibly young ninth-graders ran across the courtyard—had he ever been that small? He knocked on the headmaster's door._ Am I doing this? _He was._

* * *

  
Strange was the sight, to see Aglionby full of Agliobies out of Aglionby uniforms.

The school had won at a regional quiz bowl, which Tad only knew because the regional quiz bowl winners had yet to shut up about it. He got it, they were on the smarter spectrum of Aglionby’s pickings. Yes, they were to thank for his allowance to wear comfortable jeans as opposed to ironed-down slacks today. Thank you very kindly, Andy, now please fuck off.

He may have felt pride in his school, but he was too busy thinking about other things to be able to enjoy feeling it. 

Everyone was in casuals, but there was nothing casual about it. If anything, the lack of normality just reminded Tad of how unnormal everything was today. The dark tan vest Laureate wore over his beige shirt served as a physical manifestation of what had become of this school day.

The memory of that creature, the three-eyed, two-beaked, flying white people eater, replayed in his mind on loop. He had nightmares of it since and was now having difficulty discerning between what was memory and what he had woken up in a sweat over. Had the monster screeched at him when it had turned around, or had it simply clacked its two beaks menacingly?

He needed to find Adam.

"Mom said you can't drive the car anymore," Laureate told him. He said it with nonchalance, as though Tad wasn't fluent in his best friend's tones and couldn't hear the animosity behind it. 

He needed to find Adam and talk to him.

“I can’t help if your car hates me, man. You gotta take that up with the car.”

“You crashed it into a dumpster.”

But, once again, he couldn’t find goddamn Adam Parrish anywhere.

“I told you, an animal jumped into the road. I can’t help it when North American animals go whack.”

Laureate shook his head fervently, as though Tad was to blame here. “Whatever. You’re still not getting the keys back. Shall we dig out your old bike from the garage? I’m sure it’s still in there somewhere.”

“Okay, first of all: fuck you.”

 _Rex Corvus,_ Latin words spoke to his mind again, _parate Regis Corvi._

Tad heaved a sigh. He wondered if he could switch out Latin class for another before he forgot how to think in English. He couldn't even understand the words filling his head, but they filled his head anyway. 

“Don’t get mad at me for your piss poor driving.”

“I already said I was sorry! Do you need a formal written apology, in calligraphy and shit?”

His best friend glared stubbornly at the path ahead of them. “Yes.”

“I don’t know if I can promise the calligraphy—”

“Carruthers, buddy! Myers!”

He hadn’t noticed that they had been walking by a fellow Aglionby until he had called out to them from the green of the school lawn. Tad would have thought that all the uniquely tailored clothing would have made it easier to recognize each other, but in reality, it made it harder. He didn't know that Henry Cheng was the one sitting behind a card table, brandishing a notepad and a mug full of writing tools, until he noticed the spiked black hair. 

“Hey, Cheng,” he greeted warmly, happy to have a distraction.

Laureate too seemed to be pleased with a break in their quarrel and approached with an outstretched hand. “Good day, man. What’s all this?”

Henry shook it and grandly said, “The future!” then handed them both something to write with; a pen and a pencil.

Without words, Laureate traded Tad’s pen for the pencil. Tad couldn’t be offended when he knew his writing sucked too much to allow him something as permanent as ink.

“A petition?” Laureate studied the notepad quizzically.

Then he made a face at the same moment Tad did. In big, black, and very much permanent letters, the word _ANARCHY_ took up more than two lines of space.

Henry’s gaze flicked down and noticed a beat after they had.

“Lynch decided that civility wasn’t in the quota today,” he explained.

"Which Lynch?" Tad asked, although he had a feeling. 

“Which do you think?”

"He's an asshole," Laureate said breezily, leaning over the card table to sign. "It's better just to ignore." 

Meanwhile, Tad’s mind was turning this over. The word _ANARCHY_ was at the bottom of the list of signatures.

“Was he just here?” he asked.

Henry had been grinning as Laureate signed but then returned his focus to Tad. "Who, Lynch?" 

Tad didn’t know why he had to elaborate, unless Henry had been hoping that he hadn’t meant Lynch.

In truth, he didn’t. However, he knew two certain people who always ended up being in the same vicinity as that Lynch, and Tad wanted to talk to one of them.

“Yeah, him.”

Henry shrugged and pointed with another writing tool, a red editing pen, further down the colonnade they had been traveling. The brightness of the red pen seemed to act as a warning as he pointed in that direction, a sign indicating that continuing down that path carried the risks of unpleasant factors. _Road Work Ahead_ or _Look Out For Falling Rocks._

Tad quickly grabbed the notepad, scribbled down his name, and handed it back to Henry. He then hurried down the colonnade.

“Tad?” Laureate’s startled voice called out to him.

He didn’t look back as he yelled, “I’ll meet you at the car!”

“Things to do, places to be,” he heard Henry’s upbeat voice say, and then change to, “Hey, does everyone have somewhere to run today? Did I miss something? Myers!”

He imagined that Laureate was, instead of meeting him at the car, hurrying behind him, but Tad’s focus had fallen elsewhere. Deeper down the shadowed colonnade, to where the door to the headmaster’s office lied, he found them.

Those three gems in a word of gravel, each a different kind, forged from a different place.

Tad didn’t care for two of them.

“Hey, Parrish!”

Adam jolted in surprise as Tad slowed into a walk before stopping in front of him. On either side of him, looking equally surprised, was the famous Dick Gansey and the infamous Ronan Lynch. The two of them registered what Tad had just said and eyed Adam with a mixture of confusion and suspicion.

As it was with the rest of the Aglionbies, seeing them in their public attire was just as jarring and almost uncomfortable. The Lynch looked even more intimidating in his dark jeans and black biker jacket, and Dick Gansey looked like even more of his royal lineage was slipping through his image with his polo shirt and ironed-down shorts, and Adam…

Tad lost his train of thought.

He was wearing the cargo pants, _the_ cargo pants that Tad had seen in one of the plastic bins in his apartment. Besides that, he had a simple brown shirt and sneakers on, very unlike the other Aglionbies with their down vests and plaid pants and brand-name pullovers, all of which Laureate was sporting. Adam, however, didn’t require such fanciful things to look like he belonged in a piece of artwork hanging on a museum’s wall.

Such simple clothing became so mysterious in the colonnade, where the sun had lowered to a point where it couldn’t reach them there anymore. It darkened many of his sun-bleached features, all of his freckles now blurred through the shadows, his uneven hair switching from boyish in the light to something more alluring in the dark.

This was Casual Adam, but Tad failed to see anything casual about it. 

_You have unlocked_ , a game narrator’s voice announced in his head, _Casual Adam. Rarity Level: Epic._

Tad suddenly found it difficult to breathe. He resisted the urge to lift a hand to his neck.

Ever the ringleader, Dick Gansey took a step away from the door. “Always a pleasure, Carruthers, but I’m afraid you caught us at a bad time. I was just about to speak to the headmaster.”

Tad didn’t see how that had anything to do with why he was there. “That’s fine. I’m just here to talk with Parrish.”

More suspicious eyeing was sent Adam’s way.

Laureate walked up beside him then, just as confused but also warry as he took in the people in the conversation. Tad could tell that he was not happy with the profiles involved. 

He turned to Tad. “What’s up over here?”

The Lynch finally spoke, and when he did it came out frozen as though he had popped it into a blast chiller before saying, “Nothing.”

“Something, actually,” Tad corrected, then returned his gaze to Adam, trying to blur out the sights of the rest of the company as he did. There were so many people surrounding him, forcing him to cut apart the focus that he had wanted to save exclusively for Adam. Ideally, he pictured Laureate going to wait for him in the car, Gansey disappearing behind the headmaster’s door, and the Lynch...doing whatever a Lynch does, but just somewhere else.

Tad had a deeply rooted feeling that that wasn’t going to happen.

“Perhaps a better time,” Dick Gansey offered before he knocked on the door. He then said to his two gems, “Are you waiting out here for me?”

“No,” said Lynch. “Parrish and I are going for a drive.”

“We are?” Adam asked.

Say something now, Tad told himself, or forever hold your peace.

Tad would not be holding his peace today.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, Parrish and I already made plans.”

Adam looked to him now. “We did?”

Dick Gansey and Laureate had matching confused expressions, except Dick’s had been crafted for Adam and Laureate was staring Tad down with his.

And then there was the Lynch.

“Too bad,” Lynch said, slowly and without room for argument. Or rather, a clear threat if there was to be an argument. “We got shit we gotta do.”

His eyes widened at Lynch's reaction. He knew his way around Aglionbies, could predict their responses, but these were no average Aglionbies. These three, Dick and Lynch and Adam Parrish, were an entirely other species, disguised as Aglionbies. They were an endangered species, Tad knew because otherwise they wouldn't be here. They would be among their own kind, but since there weren't many, they had been forced to use Aglionby as their sanctuary, among all the little domestic creatures like Tad himself, until they could be released into the wild. 

The wild, Tad thought, had better look out.

“Yeah, well, we have some important things to discuss, so...” Tad stared into the eyes of death and shrugged at it. “Guess you’ll just have to reschedule.”

Laureate side-eyed him with an expression that spoke volumes of how much danger Tad was dancing in.

Adam stepped between them before the Lynch could be wanted for another murder.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Adam decided rather than asked of him.

The Lynch saddled up next to Adam and hissed in his ear, “Discuss _what?”_

Tad ignored him and everyone else and spoke only to Adam. “When is later? I need to know.”

“Why do you _need_ to know?” Laureate demanded.

“Now isn’t a good time,” Adam told him.

“Never,” Tad said, “is a good time for you.”

The Lynch shoved aside the arm that tried to block him as he moved past Adam and up to Tad. “We got a problem, buddy?”

“No. No, problem,” Laureate said at the same time Tad said, “Actually, yeah. We do.”

“Gentlemen.” Dick Gansey abandoned the door to walk into the circle, somehow managing to force them all back a step without touching a single one of them. He gave a brief laugh, full of well-meaning and the manners of someone attending a holiday dinner. “Let’s all handle this like men.”

Tad really would rather not. He thought privately to himself that he would, in all honesty, prefer a much more immature battle of boyish wits, filled with insults and riddled with stupid reasons.

That was an Aglionby thing to do, though, and Tad was not surrounded by normal Aglionbies.

“You mean with our fists?” The Lynch hissed again.

“Ha. No.” Dick Gansey waved Lynch as well as Adam further out of the little gathering they had created, until they were both safely secured behind him. He then turned to Tad and his friend. He gave a pleasant smile and pulled out his phone, tilting it up in offering. “Your number, if you will? I’ll let you know when we’re next available.”

Belated, Tad realized that just about every single soul in the Academy, including the teachers, would have bled to have been offered Dick Gansey’s personal cell number. He belatedly realized that as he said, “I don’t want to know when you’re available, I want to know when _he_ is.”

He didn’t know who looked more startled. Dick or Adam.

The Lynch looked too pissed to have any room left to be startled.

The door opened.

All their heads spun as Headmaster Child appeared. He took a step past the threshold and looked them over.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a voice distinctly made of Dick Gansey’s kind. “Might I ask what we are all doing outside my office?”

Tad surveyed his company with a brief scan and gathered that they all had very different, very separate reasons. 

Dick Gansey was here for the headmaster.

Adam was here because his friends were.

Laureate was here because his friend was too.

Tad knew why he was here.

And the Lynch was here for a drive that was decidedly in the way of Tad's plans. 

“Headmaster Child,” Dick Gansey greeted, as though they had pleasantly bumped into their superior and not nearly caught in a bickering match right outside his door. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you.”

“Ah, yes. By all means, come in.” He stepped aside to let Dick Gansey, golden child and the pride and joy of present-day Aglionby Academy, walk through.

The golden child gave a nervous glance back at the group he was leaving behind.

Child said, “Always a pleasure to speak with you,” before turning back to his other students and became suddenly much less happy. “I expect all of you to be on your merry way?”

“We will be, shortly,” Adam immediately promised.

“Well, that all depends,” Tad reminded him. “You still haven’t given me a date.”

Adam jerked. “I haven’t what?”

"When are we going to speak, Parrish?" Tad elaborated, growing impatient. “When and where?”

Adam relaxed. “Oh. Oh, that’s what—Another time.”

“When is another time?”

“Try never,” sneered the Lynch.

Headmaster Child cleared his throat. 

Laureate tugged on Tad’s arm. “We were just leaving.”

 _No, we really fucking weren’t,_ Tad thought, but allowed himself to be dragged away anyway.

He realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere with all of these obstacles in his way. The authority of Child paired with the hostility of Lynch had blocked off his path to Adam.

Reluctantly, he told Adam, “Later,” and turned to follow his best friend back down the colonnade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a bit early but it's my birthday weekend!!! Had the chapter ready early and wanted to celebrate! Enjoy! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	6. —Able

_As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan’s eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practiced but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad about it, because it was vanity, really:_ See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes.

_Maybe he was wrong. He could be wrong._

I am unknowable, Ronan Lynch.

_“You want to see what I’ve been working on?” Ronan asked. All casual._

_"Sure," Adam replied. All casual._

* * *

_“What the_ hell _—?”_

_The braying note in his father’s voice brought Adam rushing back to himself. One hand was poised in the air, as if he had meant to touch Adam, or had already, and was withdrawing._

_In the meat of his palm, a small thorn protruded. A thread of blood trembled from the wound, bright as a miracle._

_Plucking the thorn free, his father regarded Adam, this thing he made. He was silent for a long moment, and then something registered in his face. It wasn’t quite fear, but it was uncertainty. His son was before him, and he did not know him._

I am unknowable.

* * *

Wantable, unknowable.

These were the thoughts that Tad allowed himself to drift into as he remembered Adam Parrish.

Wantable, unknowable, rememberable—except that wasn’t a word, but perhaps it should have been, if only to be used for one certain person. Adam Parrish was all of those things. Wantable, unknowable, rememberable, unforgettable, irresistible. 

The thoughts quickly spiraled in the wrong direction and Tad promptly snapped his book shut. What the hell? 

“What the hell?” Laureate echoed his thoughts. He looked startled at the sudden _wham_ the closing of the book had caused in the otherwise quiet library. Several other students leaned over to peek down the aisle they were down. Laureate tried to ignore them. “Dude, do you have a problem? You’re acting like you have a problem.”

Tad was starting to think he did.

He stood from their little study spot, crammed in the corner of the abandoned tax section of the library. They had stolen the pillows from the plush chairs and smuggled in blankets and snacks. They had convinced themselves that it would have made studying more enjoyable, but most of the time the books had been discarded for Nintendos.

“Just tired, I guess.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Laureate hissed.

“I'm fine, man. Leave me be." He stuffed his things into his backpack and heaved it over his shoulder. "Later." 

“Where are you going?”

“I just said I’m tired. I’m heading back to our room.”

Worry took ahold of his best friend’s face then. He made to grab his own backpack too. “Want me to come with?”

“Nah, it’s okay. You still got a bunch of chapters left.”

Tad did too, but he wouldn’t be able to focus on it. He glanced at the cover of the book next to Laureate, another copy of the one Tad had placed in his backpack, _Latin Grammar and Punctuation: 2nd Edition._ Every example sentence reminded Tad of eyes that could only be tagged down as blue and hair that could only be tagged down as blond, but in truth looked so much more like a dusty, murky, unfathomable color that couldn’t quite be named, the features of someone in an old photograph, not black and white, but the colors just washed out enough that they couldn’t be distinguished—

“Dude.”

Tad realized he had been staring at a wall and returned his gaze to his best friend.

His best friend was staring at him in concern.

“Yeah?”

“Did you not hear any of what I just said? Any of it?”

“No.”

Laureate placed his head in a single hand.

“I told you I was tired.”

Laureate waved him off. “Alright, alright. Go lay down, Margaret, don’t forget to take your teeth out.”

Tad could feel his friend’s worry piercing him until he finally rounded a bookcase and had walked out of sight.

He watched his shoes the entire walk, sleek and glossy aside from the mud smears across the toes and making that satisfying _clip clop_ sound with every step on the floors. He wondered if maybe Laureate should be worried. Maybe Tad should be worried too. He could admit that he hadn’t been acting like his usual self the past week.

Of course, when one saw a giant fucking two-beaked monster bird flying out in the dark of night, Tad imagined that one would not feel quite the same for the rest of their week.

The memory of the two-beaked monster, oddly, turned his mind back to Adam again. He supposed it wasn't entirely odd, since Adam had shown up right after the monster incident. What made it odd, he gathered, was that such strange and frightening memories could trigger all the memories he had of Adam. 

He sighed. He hadn’t gotten the chance to speak with Adam yet. All week long, the guy had vanished as soon as school ended, racing off in either his ugly-ass car, the Lynch’s BMW, or Dick Gansey’s orange monstrosity.

Tad wished he had a car so that he could drive Adam places too.

He gritted his teeth, entirely encircled in his thoughts and frustrations and he knew it as he marched up the stairs to the dorm rooms.

He had told Adam that he had wanted—no, needed to speak with him, and just as he had expected, when given the chance, Adam Parrish had gone off the radar.

Adam wasn’t going to seek Tad out, leaving Tad to be burdened with the thoughts that plagued his waking hours, thoughts of horrific creatures and strange happenings and the oddity of how Adam always seemed to be associated with those things.

He paused as he had been lifting the keys to his dorm room door.

He took a couple of steps back— _clip clop_ —as he came to a realization.

Why was he waiting for Adam?

This was Adam Parrish, the dude with a reputation for appearing and disappearing all across Aglionby like some kind of ghost who haunted the premises. Tad didn’t know much about ghost hunters, but he did know this: they were called ghost hunters, not ghost waiters.

“That’s it, Parrish,” he muttered. “You have wasted my patience. _Wasted it.”_

He dashed down the halls—less a _clip clop_ now and more of a _clack clack clack_ —as the hard soles of his shoes struck the equally hard wooden floors. He flew down the stairs but then had to stop out of guilt to help an Aglionby pick up his papers after Tad had knocked them out of his grip.

“Dude,” the Aglionby said, not even bothering to help pick up the fallen materials.

Tad shoved the unsorted papers back into his arms and continued his flight down the rest of the stairs.

Once out the door and to his bike, he unlocked it from the racks and took off.

Halfway to his destination, he realized he had left right as the sun had gone down. He didn't know why he always seemed to end up traveling at night, but he didn't like it. Strange things seemed to only happen at night, when the word was disoriented. 

He was also willing to bet that the monster bird was nocturnal too.

He had been holding out on the hope that this time, since he had been anticipating it, his phone wouldn’t lose reception as soon as the church came into view. Wistful thinking, he should have known. Anywhere where Adam existed, creepiness was sure to follow.

He sighed as he watched the bars on his phone drop to zero.

In the flickering, dying light of the streetlamp, sorely in need of a repairman, Tad hadn’t noticed the extra vehicle in the parking lot until right before he biked past it. Where Adam’s ugly-ass car sat parked, an old pick-up truck loomed next to it. He did not recognize it.

Tad regarded it as he dropped his bike onto the parking space next to it. He tapped his phone for it to light up, checking the time and frowning at the late hour. He wondered how many people tended to visit Adam’s place after dark, and belatedly realized that he himself had become one of those people.

Well, maybe if Adam didn’t make it so damn difficult to find him during the day, people wouldn’t have to resort to coming to him at night.

Tad counted on his fingers how many people this made for Adam’s nightly visitations: including Tad himself, there was also Dick Gansey, Ronan Lynch, and now whoever owned that pick-up truck.

“You’re going to be a fool in that courtroom.”

Tad halted halfway up the stairs to the apartment.

“Are you going to say anything?”

The voice he heard had not been Adam’s. It was too deep, too rough around the vowels to even be someone of an Aglionby’s age.

He picked up the speed, taking two steps at a time. He only slowed once he turned the corner closest to the top, finding someone already standing with Adam on the landing outside his door.

The first thing that registered was how angry this man looked. His expression had soured and twisted long before Tad had gotten there.

“Who the fuck are you?” The man had heard Tad’s approach on the stairs and had whirled around to ask.

The second thing that registered was Adam, hanging in the doorway. He looked frozen, as though touched by an object so cold it had set the rest of his body into ice. 

Tad bit his lip. Something about the situation didn’t seem right. “Adam?”

Briefly, the man’s eyes flicked to his chest. Tad was exposed to the reaction enough to know that he was looking at his Aglionby Academy crest, brandished proudly enough one would see it even in the dying light outside.

“Beat it, tramp.”

Tad blinked wide, thoroughly astounded and appalled as the man had the audacity and lack of class to shoot a large wad of spit right by his shoes.

He quirked an eyebrow at it, then at the man, unimpressed.

The third thing that Tad registered was that he was ending this, whatever it was, now.

“Charming.”

The man had begun to turn to Adam but whipped around again as though physically jerked back by the single word. “You want to repeat that?”

“Certainly: Charming it is to meet you.”

Something cool, crisp, and clean fell over Tad, something that had by-passed his parents, neither of who had attended Aglionby Academy. It was something he had inherited from his grandfather, who had. 

“Thaddeus Lance Carruthers.” He held out his hand as he had been taught, as though fully expecting this man to take it. “You must be Mr. Parrish’s father. Forgive my appearances, I was not expecting other company at this late hour.”

The man wrinkled his nose at the outstretched hand. “You think I give two shits?”

“Don’t you? Oh, how sad.” His voice spoke a different meaning than his words, his voice carrying the tone of _I truly could care less_. "I would have thought Mr. Parrish's father would have been pleased to make acquaintances with his friends from school." 

The man barked a laugh. Tad noticed that Adam, still in the doorway, had flinched.

“That bitch-ass prep boy school?”

“That would be the one.”

The man lost whatever parts of a smile he had when laughing then. “You know what, son? I reckon I don’t appreciate your attitude.”

“Quite frankly, sir, I could say the same.”

Adam looked like he had stopped breathing.

The man looked pissed.

Tad was reigning in every ounce of his willpower not to raise his fists.

 _Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,_ his grandfather had once told him over dinner, pointing his fork at him, _That’s a load of crap._

He took all the adrenaline surging through his hands and forearms and drove them into leveling his expression. The longer he maintained the same bland, borderline bored, polite-out-of-courtesy-because-do-to-so-otherwise-would-be beneath-him tone of voice, the more he could see the man cracking.

“You’re walking on some thin fucking ice.”

“I can afford it if it breaks.”

Adam quickly intervened. “You need to leave.”

He shrunk back as the man snapped at him, “Stay out of this.”

Tad felt his eyes burning. They felt at risk at setting his entire face aflame.

“On the contrary,” he drawled now, “Mr. Parrish and I have a previous engagement. Shame it is to cut this little reunion short, but we do have some homework to attend to.”

He nodded at Adam. He had been hoping Adam would have taken the cue and nodded back, but he remained frozen in place. Nevertheless, Tad pushed on.

“Aglionby Academy can be so meticulous about their level of quality, and don’t even get me started on the due dates. We really must be getting to it, so, if you’ll excuse me.”

He stepped around the man, taking great care not to touch him and being not at all discreet about it. Gently, he ushered Adam back into the room. He made sure he had directed him behind the door and out of sight before letting the man see the full intent of Tad’s smile, every inch of it letting this man know that if it were legal, he would run him over with his best friend’s car.

“Oh, and one last thing, Mr. Parrish.” Tad kept an arm up as he held the edge of the door; a human barrier, a living barbed wire fence baiting him to try. “Forgive me, but I do believe I overheard something about a court date? My family just so happens to know some very experienced lawyers. Do let me know should you ever need a referral." 

Tad willed all his strength into throwing the door shut—

_SLAM_

—leaving his words to hang in the air outside. The walls on either side of the frame shook.

He waited until the stomp of shoes on old, creaking stairs had echoed away until he was nearly certain that the man would not hear them speaking. 

“What a bitch,” he said to the door, then spun on Adam. “What the actual fuck was that? What was his problem?”

Adam’s expression was unreadable. Unknowable, and now unreadable too. “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have said anything.”

Adam stood there, breathing heavily, only the muscles of his chest in movement. Tad flailed back and forth as he paced in front of the door, breathing heavily, all muscles in movement.

“What I should have done is nail that guy in the face. Send him flying back down those damn stairs.” He mocked an uppercut. _“Wabam,_ motherfucker.”

“This isn’t your business.” Adam’s tone had sharpened. “You should have never come here.”

“Don’t tell me that I should have just left you to that piece of shit.” While Adam sharpened his words, enough to pierce without a ripple, Tad sawed down his until they were solid and blunt, enough to cause a good splash if he were to throw them in the Aglionby lake. “Because that’s too much to ask of anybody.”

Somehow Adam managed to keep looking more and more startled, as though he had a knob and with every new sentence that left Tad’s mouth, he turned it up another notch.

“You know nothing of what just happened.”

“Well, no shit, Parrish!” Tad held out his arms. “You never tell me anything. I don’t even think you tell your friends everything—You know what, where the hell are they? Where’d they go?”

Tad spun left and right, as though Dick Gansey and the Lynch would suddenly appear in the cramped little space of Adam’s apartment.

For once, he wished Adam's friends had been present when he had arrived. Tad would have enjoyed watching the creature known as Ronan Lynch unleash on that man. 

“You see how late it is, right?” Adam asked, as though Tad was an idiot. “They’re at home.”

Tad vaguely recalled the old manufacturing building. The place of residence was a common topic of choice at Aglionby when discussing the intricacies of Dick Gansey. “You mean Mammoth?”

The way Adam’s mouth pressed into a thin line suggested that he had just been insulted. “Monmouth.”

“Whatever. Why aren’t you with them? They all live together. Dick and Lynch and...who’s that other kid you guys are always hanging out with? Smudgey one, with the blond hair?”

Tad cocked his head while he waited for Adam to explain, wondering why Adam’s startled levels seemed to have shot through the roof.

“You see Noah?”

That was...a weird thing to ask.

“Uh,” he began, because he didn’t know how else to begin responding to that question. “Is Noah the blond guy? Kinda on the short side, kinda pale, kinda—”

“Yes,” Adam hissed, and Tad didn’t know why he was hissing but it struck Tad that, somehow, mentioning this blond kid had deeply unnerved him. “Yes, that’s Noah.”

Tentatively, Tad finger gunned him, nodded, and said, “Cool.”

He shrugged it off, letting Adam know he would drop the subject. He chalked it up that perhaps Adam didn’t have a great relationship with Noah, unlike his golden, unbreakable bonds with Dick Gansey and Lynch. He saw Adam with those two the most anyway, but sometimes that blond kid would appear, always quiet, always looking in dire need of Vitamin D.

That could also, Tad gathered, be a part of the reason why Adam didn’t live with the other three boys at the manufacturing building. Perhaps he couldn’t stand living under the same roof as Noah, or maybe that kid had taken the last room there. Tad didn’t know, but he wished he did.

But was living on his own better? Was getting cornered by a horrible relative better than putting up with a few roommates?

Tad let his gaze fall to the floorboards.

He couldn’t believe that man was Adam’s father.

Adam stiffened as Tad pulled him into a hug. For a flitting moment, Tad noticed that he was an inch or so taller than Adam was, and used that to pull him closer.

“I’m sorry, man.” He whispered into his shoulder. “You deserve so much better.”

He pulled back but kept his hands on Adam’s arms. He frowned as Adam wiped the heel of his hand over his right eye and cheek, then wiped it on his slacks.

“Hey, do you...” Tad stuttered off as he tried to find his nerve again. Why was talking to Adam Parrish so hard? “You want me to spend the night?”

Adam looked up. “What?”

“What if he comes back? I don’t want to leave you here alone.” For all the adrenaline and fury still rushing through his system, they failed to help him put together a speech that proved it. “I’ll just...hang here for the night. Okay?”

Adam looked away. “It’s better if you don’t.”

He rolled his head along with his eyes. “That’s what you’ve been saying since I got here, and so far, dude, you've been wrong. Things are not better. The fuck makes you think any of this is better?" 

Adam continued looking away. He said nothing to defend himself with.

Tad bristled. Not so much at Adam, but still over the memory of that man, over the existence of that man, somewhere out there, still causing Adam this pain even with the distance between them. 

“Fine. You know what, I’ll just sleep downstairs.” Yes, downstairs. In the creepy church, probably haunted, probably he’d be found dead in the morning and become the inspiration needed for next year’s hit horror movie, but at least he’d be closer to Adam if he needed him. “If that jackass shows up again, I’ll run him over.”

—with his bike, since he didn’t have a car.

If only his parents had gotten him a car.

Dejected but trying not to show it, Tad kept his back straight and headed for the door. He jolted when a hand grabbed his shoulder, when he felt fingers pressing into the fabric of his crew team jacket and Aglionby shirt, firm and meaningful. 

He didn't know why, but his first thought was that he liked the feeling of Adam Parrish's hand touching him, a part of Adam purposely reaching out to make contact with him. His second thought was the desire to reach back. His hand was already halfway to lifting, to settle over Adam's hand when he stopped it, just in time before Adam could notice. 

“You don’t have to.”

“I never said I did, Parrish.”

Seconds of silence went by. Tad turned so he could face him again. More seconds passed between them.

Tad felt the awkwardness seeping into him again, as it always did during moments without words, but this time he didn’t mind as much, not when he got to stand so close to Adam, could still feel his fingers on his shoulder.

He almost frowned when Adam retracted his hand.

“Go ahead and stay,” Adam told him. “Have the bed.”

“I told you last time, I’m not kicking you off your own bed. What’s with you and sacrificing shit?”

Tad leaned back as Adam dissolved into chuckling.

“What?”

Adam doubled over and covered his face with a hand.

“What, what’s so funny?”

Tad’s chest ached at the sound. He had never heard Adam’s laugh before. It sounded soft and airy, something you would hear on a warm summer’s day, at the park or by a lake with friends.

“It’s nothing. Just, your choice of words. Don’t worry about it.” Adam straightened back up. “I still don’t want you sleeping on the floor, though.”

Tad rolled his neck out of frustration.

“I really don’t mind the floor, dude.”

“I mind the floor,” Adam said. “I mind that you sleep on it all night.”

“Well, I mind that you sleep on it all night.” Tad was confused by his own words as he thought them over. “Wait, no. That’s not right. I mind that you sleep on it when I’m here. Not that you have, but this time you would. I mean, if you would, which you won’t, because you...you know...Fuck."

Tad felt his face burning, humiliated that even during an important moment like this, his words couldn’t work properly. He hadn’t failed English, he didn’t understand why this was such a problem for him.

Then a small grin appeared on Adam’s face. He looked down, but not quick enough for Tad to miss it.

“I guess we’ll both be sleeping on the floor then.”

Tad put his hands on his hips in an attempt to look more mature. It didn't feel natural, so he crossed his arms, but then that felt too guarded. At a loss, he ended up just rubbing the back of his head. 

“Guess we will,” he said.

Adam went to grab a broom, to sweep away dust and dirt and freak out the spiders scuttling across the floorboards. Even when merely sweeping, Adam held a sense of grace, of wonderment, a pinnacle of human amazement stolen from history, simply preparing the floor for a night of rest. 

In comparison, Tad was joyously ungraceful as he ripped the blankets and sheets from the bed. He pulled together those same old blankets and plopped it all on the floor to make for a nest.

He left Adam alone for a few seconds as he peeked into the bathroom to fetch any towels to add to it. He only found one, but it was damp, and it was then that he realized that Adam’s hair was also, at the moment, damp.

He gazed at the shower in the bathroom for a long moment. He didn’t know why, but he left the bathroom feeling awfully flustered.

Despite it, he grinned at Adam as he returned to the room. He noticed his damp hair and took a second to appreciate it, to add Just Showered Adam to his card collection.

A card he didn’t realize he would appreciate so much, but, hell, he was putting together quite the collection at this point.

Only fifteen minutes went by, but to Tad, they felt like fifteen minutes that had slipped out of time. An incredibly brief slice of his life, taken out to hang in this realm where nothing else mattered except them, the quiet, and the linens in their hands. 

As he had the last time, he tore off his row team jacket and bundled it under his head as a pillow. A foot away, Adam turned off the lamp and lied down next to him.

“So,” Adam began, almost hesitantly. Almost. “Thaddeus?”

“No,” was Tad’s immediate reply. The mere utterance of his proper first name made his face pinch up. “Just, no.”

Adam's responding chuckle defused any discomfort he felt from the fancy-schmancy name that had haunted his elementary school years. Tad grinned to himself, giddy to think he had made Adam smile too. 

“And what about Lance?”

“Oh. That.” Tad made another face. “Well...you can keep a secret, right?”

“May the waters judge my vow.”

Tad sucked in a breath, completely dismissing the fact that the vow wouldn’t even work since Adam had never made the crew team oath, but that didn’t matter to him. His heart still leapt in his chest.

“It’s um...It’s my dad’s name, but, um...My mom wanted a name that started with ‘L’.”

“How come?”

“So my initials would spell out TLC.”

The joyful, purely entertained laugh that bubbled out of Adam made up for every bit of embarrassment Tad had ever felt over the years. For the first time, he wouldn’t trade his name for any other, no matter what Mike from fourth grade had said. Fuck him, he wasn’t hanging with Adam Parrish.

“You know,” Tad mentioned, staring off into the shadows. “You don’t really have a lot of stuff.”

He knew Adam’s offended tone, which wasn’t a tone at all, it was just him not responding. Therefore, Tad elaborated.

“I’m just saying we could really trip out this place. I’ve got some stuff at my parent’s place, like this giant black rug that looks like a bear—Actually, I think it is a bear. I don’t know, maybe my Granddad shot it, I don’t remember—Anyway, it’s not like I’m using the room back at my house right now. I could bring it over.”

Then the next time Tad crashed the place and they decided to sleep on the floor, they could make a bed on the rug.

“It’s fine,” Adam said, a nicer way of saying _please, don’t._ “I’ve got enough.”

He sighed. “Who cares about enough? Just add more for the fun of it.”

“I have more at...home.”

The uncomfortable pause after the word _home_ was enough for Tad to know, solidly, that going back to that place was not a possibility.

“But I’m fine here,” Adam finalized. “This is enough.”

“So, wait,” Tad began. “This isn’t all your stuff?”

The lack of response told Tad that Adam was chewing over his thoughts.

He continued, “You’re saying that you still have some things back at your old place?”

Another long pause filled the darkness of the apartment. A car passed the church (must have momentarily lost reception too, Tad mused) as its headlights flashed across the dusty old window next to the door.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Adam suddenly warned. “I want you to stop thinking it right now.”

Even though he knew Adam couldn’t see it, he tapped his temple and smirked. “I never think.”

Tad Carruthers was a doer, not a thinker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing from Tad’s perspective never fails to amuse me. This has been a bit of a tough month for me and writing this is so much fun, I love it! I hope everyone enjoyed it too, and that you're all having a wonderful holiday season! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	7. Finding The Right Dog For You

Tad was an Aglionby; his diploma when he graduated would serve as a pedigree to attest to that. Like a purebred lap dog, he was bred to look pretty and came with the unfortunate side effect of an excessive amount of yapping.

As an Anglionby, he lived in a dorm room. Very nearly everyone in Aglionby Academy lived in a dorm room.

Except, of course, for the handful of wolves who lived among them. Like wolves, they stayed in a pack.

Somehow, Tad had gotten swept along in that pack for the day and had, for the time being, left his bejeweled collar back in his dorm room. He may still feel like he carried a tracking chip on him, but at least that couldn’t be seen.

He sat next to one of the wolves now, and most likely, the leader of the pack.

“Thanks for bringing me along, Dick,” he said. He sat next to him in the roaring Camaro, trying to figure out how anyone held a conversation in the thing.

“Please,” Dick Gansey said, sounding much more comfortable with having to shout all of his words, “just call me Gansey.”

Tad briefly reflected on how he had ended up in the legendary orange car with the legendary Dick Gansey behind the wheel.

_“Wanna go get Parrish’s shit from his old place?”_

_Gansey, who had been furiously scribbling in a withered down journal, looked up slowly and had proceeded to stare at Tad for the next ten seconds. He took off his glasses and asked, “How do you know this?”_

_“I dunno, he just told me?”_

_Tad was then stared at for another ten seconds._

_“So, we like...doing this thing or not, bro? ‘Cause I don’t have a ride.”_

And thus, here Tad was.

“I must say,” Dick Gansey said, making Tad snort with the overly posh phrase of I must say. Honestly, at this point, Dick wasn’t even trying to cover up his royal lineage. “I’m quite surprised Adam confided all this to you. He’s usually quiet about his personal life.”

“I know, right? The fucker's not even a closed book, he's a book locked in a safe and thrown into the ocean." Tad considered the witchy side of Parrish and added, "Probably cursed the safe so when you try to open it, you get attacked by a Kraken."

Tad was too busy staring out the window to fully appreciate the expression that had fallen over Dick Gansey.

Dick cleared his throat. “With that in mind, how is it that you got him to open up so quickly? It took me a long while before I got anywhere.”

Tad shrugged. “Dunno. I mean, I gave him a doughnut?”

For some reason, Dick Gansey suddenly fell into silence. Well, as much silence as the Camaro would allow, so Tad just shrugged and resumed his window watching.

He observed as the roads they drove on shifted from slick, black asphalt to a fainter and fainter variety, dry and cracked and muted, until it turned into a dirt road altogether. Wooden fences turned into wire. Nice stores with flowers for sale became gas stations with big, obnoxious lights that advertised prices for beer and boiled peanuts.

Tad watched as they passed a store with a name he didn’t recognize. Through the dust on one of the windows, he read the words on the sign and his nose wrinkled as he realized it was a bookstore. A used bookstore.

“What happened to civilization?”

Instead of laughing, Gansey said, “We’re almost there.”

Tad frowned at his surroundings.

“You sure about that?”

Although Robert Parrish was at work, neither Gansey nor Tad had wanted Adam anywhere near his old place of residence. The notion of Adam even in a place that held the man’s presence was enough to nauseate them both. They couldn’t stand it, so they had waited until Adam had been at his own work too, and then they had gone to retrieve the last of their friend’s belongings.

Or, in Tad’s mind, to rescue his treasures from a place of great evil. He half expected some vicious, snarling dog to lurch at them from its chain at the front of the house when they arrived, its collar covered in spikes.

“You know, I’ve never seen Parrish’s place,” Tad mentioned, taking it in, for better or worse, through the passenger side window of the Camaro. “I’m surprised he hasn’t at least told me which street he lives in."

“Are you truly?”

“What?” Tad hated when Gansey hit him with questions like that. Deep and thought-provoking, too multi-layered for Tad to keep up. It reminded him of how slow he felt, especially when surrounded by people too fast for this world. "Am I truly what?”

“Surprised,” Dick Gansey elaborated in the same thought-provoking voice.

Forced to think, Tad thought, and realized he wasn’t.

“Why would I be surprised?” he decided to ask. “Is it because he’s ashamed of it?”

“He believes people like us don’t belong here,” Dick Gansey explained, surveying the fields of dying yellow grass, “don’t deserve to see such states.”

“I don’t get it,” Tad said.

Dick Gansey opened his mouth to speak, but a beat before he could something caught their collective interest outside the windshield.

Three kids in sleeveless shirts laughed in one of the yellow lawns. No— _yards,_ Tad told himself. In places like this, people called them yards, not lawns. His eyebrows went up, intrigued as the kids shot milk jugs with BB guns. When the Camaro passed the yard, they shouted _Hey, Hollywood!_ And attempted to shoot at their tires.

“Little shits,” Tad said, although not with full irritation. “Yo, yo, Dick Gansey, pull over.”

“I thought I told you—Wait, why?”

“I’ll meet you at the house.”

Dick Gansey didn’t comment on the fact that Tad would have no recognition memory of which house it was they were going to, but he stopped the Camaro as he had been requested. Tad trusted himself to know Adam enough to be able to pick out which place he had lived in and, therefore, had no qualms as he hopped out of the car and made a beeline for the three little shits.

Dick Gansey started the car back up, watching in the rearview mirror as Tad snatched up a fourth BB gun from the grass and caused screaming and mayhem.

Tad reunited with him some fifteen minutes later, locating the house he pegged as the Parrish’s. It had an awful lot of mechanic equipment spilling out around the corners and by the doors, with very little thought given to its appearance. A Parrish trait, Tad mused, but not an Adam’s. To himself, he thought how Adam deserved a better last name, one with traits he could live up to and build himself on, like Carruthers.

Tad rammed his face into the wall of the house, startling Gansey, who had been waiting outside the door.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “Are you alright?”

Tad muttered into the wall, “Quite.”

“Why did you…?”

“Don’t mind me.”

For a beat, Dick Gansey didn’t respond. Then he said, “Very well,” and turned to the door and rang the bell.

 _What’s the matter with you?_ Tad demanded of his mind. _Why do you keep thinking such weird shit?_

 _Fuck you,_ his mind answered back.

Tad removed his face from the material when he heard the door unlock. Before he even saw the woman’s face, he knew who it would be, and his emotions flared in response.

“Mrs. Parrish," Dick Gansey greeted, "We’re simply here for a few of his things. We won’t be long.”

The woman stared at them with round, dissociating eyes. Tad could see nothing of semblance between her and her son. “Why should I let you in...”

Tad couldn’t tell if the woman had meant for them to hear that or if she had accidentally voiced the thoughts swimming in her head.

He shoved Dick out of the way. “Because your son needs his shit, _lady,_ now move aside.”

Her eyes widened and she fell back several steps. Tad took that as invitation to come inside. He marched in first, Dick Gansey's usual role, which Tad handed back to him once he realized he had no idea where Adam's room was. He followed him down a short, stumpy hallway until they reached a barren room. Tad wondered if it had been that barren even when it had been actively lived in.

“This is his room?” It took him two seconds to see everything it had to offer. “This is my closet.”

As soon as Dick Gansey shut the door behind them, he whispered, “That was wrong.”

“Don’t pretend like she didn’t play a role in this.” Tad didn’t look at him, not out of shame but out of the need to distract himself from all the reasons surrounding him, inspiring him to get even angrier. “She gets no sympathy from me.”

By his silence, Tad was willing to bet that he agreed.

Tad shook his head. “This is messed up.”

Gansey side-eyed him. “This is Adam’s home.”

“No,” was Tad’s immediate response. “It’s not.”

Tad didn’t know Gansey well, but he had enough memories from their time on the crew team together to notice when he was getting defensive, when he worked hard to mask it.

“It is,” Dick corrected, “and I don’t think Adam would appreciate—”

“I don’t think he would appreciate you calling this his home.”

Tad may have known his signs of defense, but Tad doubted that Dick Gansey knew his, judging by his surprise.

“This isn’t his home.” Remembering that man, Mr. Parrish, made Tad think that this was never Adam’s home, not in a way a home was supposed to be. “This is his parents’ home. Parrish makes his own place, and this isn’t it.”

Dick Gansey nodded gravely but said nothing more.

Wordlessly, they began rounding up Adam’s things from his room. Tad had begun to worry if they should have brought a bag or a box or something, but soon realized why Gansey hadn’t. By the time they left the bedroom and moved on to the next room, Tad had collected less than half of what consisted of his parents’ dining room set.

“After this, we’ll be good to go,” Dick Gansey informed him as they stepped into the garage.

"Really?" Tad set the armful of miscellaneous things by the wall. "Shouldn't we check the kitchen, the yard…?"

Dick shook his head.

“Oh.” Tad’s gaze raised to the spacious garage, looking like it ate up a good junk of the tiny house. “I guess here makes sense.”

He imagined that Adam would have spent a lot of time outside with the vehicles and other machinery thingies, doing whatever mechanics did to hone their craft.

They searched around the room, splitting up to take either side of the car parked in the center. Dick Gansey clearly knew exactly where to go, walking directly over to a wooden table with tools hanging on the wall above it. For Tad, he had to be a little more creative and imagine what here could possibly belong in Adam’s inventory.

His eyes caught sight of a calendar on the wall, a woman with a suggestive amount of clothing on posing beneath the word _August_. He sniffed, unhappy about it, and decided to avert his eyes elsewhere. He really hoped that it belonged to Mr. Parrish and not Adam, although he wasn’t certain why he was hoping for that. Lots of Aglionbies had sultry pictures, images, and magazines stuffed into secret places of their dorms and cars and lockers. What was wrong if Adam did that?

Perhaps Tad would like to believe that Adam Parrish had more class than that.

The picture had begun to bother Tad so much that when Dick had his back turned, he seized his chance and ripped it off the wall.

Dick spun around at the sound. Tad hastily threw it behind an old desk.

“What was that?” Dick demanded, eyes searching in concern, most likely worrying that his companion had broken something.

Which, admittedly, Tad supposed he had, but it had been on purpose, so that was okay.

“Uh...” Tad stalled. “I was just, uh...”

They both turned then at the sound of shrill barking then. Seconds later, a scruffy little dog scrambled around the corner, running as though he was delivering life-changing messages to the two boys. He skidded across the cement floors and smacked headfirst into Gansey's ankle, then proceeded to lick his shoes. Gansey's eyes said _how cute_ but the wrinkle in his nose shrieked _my boat shoes!_

Wait, boat shoes—

Tad’s gaze flicked back to the apparel on his feet in shock.

“What are those?” he demanded.

Dick Gansey furrowed his eyebrows. “Pardon?”

“Your shoes, man. Really?” Tad waved both arms at them. “Even I’m not that uppity.”

Gansey’s eyes slid down to inspect the glossy shoes on his feet. “I happen to quite enjoy wearing these.”

Tad cringed at the horror. “Dude, that’s even worse.”

Gansey placed a hand on his chest in the pose of the offended. “These are my favorite pair.”

“You have _multiple pairs?”_

No longer getting attention from Gansey, the little dog scrambled over to Tad and attempted, hilariously, to climb up his legs. Even on his back legs, the dog barely reached his knees.

“Hey, buddy,” Tad greeted, getting down on a knee to ruffle his face. The dog took the advantage to scurry up on his lap and try to lick at his face. Tad laughed and pushed the muzzle away from his mouth. “I didn’t know Parrish had a dog.”

“I’m not entirely sure if it’s his,” Gansey informed.

Tad checked the dog's throat but found no collar. "Who do you belong to, little fella?"

The dog’s tongue went up his nose and he sputtered.

Gansey lost interest in the mutt in favor of the tasks at hand, but Tad frowned as he placed the dog down. He figured that if he wandered out of the garage, he would let it leave his thoughts, but the mutt happily followed at his heels.

“That's just about all of it," the king announced to his party of two. Well, two plus the dog. "Let's head back before we overstay our welcome."

“There is no welcome here,” Tad reminded him.

He anticipated for Dick to say something along the lines of, “Let’s keep those thoughts to ourselves,” but instead a dark look came over him. He nodded and said, “There truly isn’t.”

Dick Gansey left those words to hang in the stale, smuggy air and strolled out through the open garage doors, items hoisted in his arms,

Tad looked around the garage of hell, with a bunch of equipment that had probably taken the space of what should have been more possessions of Adam. Instead, he only had the scraps that Tad could easily leave in a meager pile on the floor by the wall. It wasn't even enough to warrant a trash box.

Tad inhaled deeply, suppressing the urge to simply break something. Particularly, he had an increasingly deep desire to crack the windshield.

He shook his head, shooing away those thoughts. He seriously doubted that Adam Parrish, classy and refined and prestigious Adam Parrish, always crisp and clean, always with his tie knotted just right and his shirt tucked in without a wrinkle in sight, always proper, but never overbearingly pompous, not with all those freckles covering his face, but they were so slight one had to squint to truly appreciate them, just like with his well-kept hair, blond but not the typical version of blond, more of a faded and sun-dappled blond that belonged in the shadows of trees, during the evening of summertime, right on the brink of fall, when the cool breezes would just begin to brush across that hair.

Wait, where had he been going with this?

Oh, yes. Right.

He seriously doubted that Adam Parrish would appreciate violence, so Tad dismissed the idea of it. Instead, he wracked his brain for what else Adam would have wished was in his apartment rather than here.

He glanced down.

He reunited with Dick Gansey a few moments later, neither of them wanting to stay any longer than necessary.

Tad derived quite a bit of pleasure from the pure gasp that ripped out of Gansey when he got into the Camaro.

“What are you doing?”

“I think it’s his dog.”

“You _think?”_ Dick Gansey’s note flipped to the verge of hysterical. “And you brought it with you?”

“I mean, it’s his dog, and we came for his stuff, right?”

“Dear Lord, Thaddeus...”

“Nope," Tad warned, holding up a finger. "Nope, don’t even go there. I do about as well with that name as you do with yours, _Richard.”_

“Point taken,” Gansey appeased, but still said, “This is theft. You can’t just kidnap someone’s animal.”

“It’s not theft, it’s a rescue. I’m rescuing someone’s animal and returning it to its original owner. Gwyndiver would be proud of me.”

“Gwyndiver...You mean _Glendower—?”_

There was no way Tad could have known what he had just set off. Startled, he spent the next half an hour listening to an extensive oral essay on the Welsh king Glendower, along with some other Welsh-ish names he didn’t care to remember, with little words like _wishes_ and _sleeping_ thrown into the mix.

Tad wished he could have been sleeping right then.

The rant, or perhaps lecture, ended once the Camaro parked in one of many empty spaces of an old parking lot. When Dick Gansey turned to him, waiting for a final response, Tad said, “I think you’ve got an issue with names, dude,” and got out of the car.

As soon as he shut the car down, the little mutt tucked in one arm like a football, he turned around and froze. The dog’s tail stopped wagging.

Dick wouldn't have heard him, still in the car, but still Tad waved a hand at what he saw and said, “What the hell is this?”

He stood in the shadows of a cold, hulking building as he peered up at it. Stairs went up the side, fire escape style like Adam’s church had, except these were metal and a hell of a lot bigger, big enough for a faculty of employees to evacuate in a fire. Warehouse-size worthy windows took up the entire wall on both floors but were heavily tinted and eerie.

He side-eyed the mutt, wondering if the dog was just as concerned as he was. The mutt noticed his staring and began to slowly wag his tail again.

Well, if a dog wasn’t concerned, Tad imagined it couldn’t have been too bad.

Dick got out of the car as well, noticed Tad's gawking, and proudly announced with a wave of his hand, “Welcome to Monmouth Manufacturing.”

Tad looked around. The immense parking lot held only a handful of vehicles in the corner: Lynch's, Dick's, and a suburban that might have also been Dick’s. There was no sign of Adam’s shitmobile.

He frowned, disappointed.

“I thought you said Parrish would be here?”

Dick Gansey led him up the fire escape. He walked with confidence, while Tad walked with the increasing fear that the old thing would break every time it wobbled beneath him. The mutt yapped at him as he squeezed him to his chest.

“Supposedly, but he could have taken on an extra shift if no one was available. Happens quite often.”

“Why the hell would he want to do that?” Tad wondered what Adam was saving up for that he wanted badly enough to actually be willing to stay at work longer.

Gansey glanced at him but said nothing as he unlocked the door at the top of the fire escape.

The mutt struggled out of Tad’s arms and leapt to the floor. His nails made scraping noises against the hard floors as it scrambled through the crack in the door.

“Wait, fido!” Tad rammed his shoulder into the door to open it faster. “You don’t have a cat in here, do you?”

“No,” Dick Gansey said, following behind him. “Just another dog.”

“You have a dog?”

“Oh, my,” a rickety voice said from inside. “Hello there, little fellow.”

As he entered what he guessed must have been the living room, he found the owner of the voice sitting back in a recliner. The man made his Granddad look like he was in the prime of his life. Tad had to wonder why there was a man like him living with a bunch of high schoolers.

The mutt had hurried up to the dog resting beside the recliner, a lazy looking Golden Retriever with a vest. The bigger dog lifted its head and tilted it back, disgruntled, as the mutt tried to sniff its nose.

“Malory, allow me to introduce you to Tad Carruthers,” Dick Gansey began with a gesture to Tad, and then moved the gesture to the old man as he then said to Tad, “Tad, this is my dear friend and mentor of mine, Dr. Roger Malory.”

“So you’ve decided to bring along another one of your friends,” the old man pointed out. “So good to see one that is rather normal looking.”

Tad scrunched his face, wondering if he should feel insulted.

The old man continued with, “I certainly hope he’s more pleasant than that tall one.”

“Why is there an old dude in your place?” Tad asked Dick.

"Apparently he's not." The old man looked at Dick. "Gansey, you are in desperate need of better company."

“Hey. I am wonderful company, thank you,” Tad argued.

“Ha.”

The sharp voice had Tad spinning around to face a different side of the building. In the doorway of what must have been his room, assuming by the excessive amount of black Tad could see from behind him, Ronan Lynch leaned against the frame, arms crossed, expression pinched.

Not to be intimidated, or rather, not to look like he was as intimidated as he felt, Tad crossed his arms to match.

“What’d you just say?” Tad dared him to repeat.

The Lynch did dare. In fact, he grinned like the Grinch, delighted to have been dared. “I said _ha.”_

Fuck. Tad didn’t have enough spine for this.

Thankfully, Gansey stepped in then.

“Oh, dear,” he said, more of his hidden royal lineage spilling out. “Lynch, Carruthers, let’s try to have some tolerance for today.”

Before Tad could retaliate, a cold waft of air hit him, making him shiver. A second later, a voice he had never heard before whispered in one of his ears, as though someone had leaned in to breathe on him and say, “Who’s he?”

He made a hollering noise and did a 160-degree turn with a jump.

It was the blond kid, pale and sad and still in his Aglionby uniform.

“Shit, man. I didn’t even hear you walking.” Tad told him, heart thumping.

The smudgy kid introduced himself by looking directly into Tad's eyes and saying, "I've been dead for seven years."

Tad grinned, immediately feeling better. He liked this guy.

“Dude, I feel that on a spiritual level.”

He gave him the standardized Aglionby greeting and lightly nailed him in the arm. The kid stared at him, then at his inflicted arm, and then at him again. He sighed.

“No one ever listens to me,” he said, blond hair falling across his eyes as he hung his head.

Tad's heart hurt. This little Aglionby dude was just so fucking sad. He wanted to hug him, but it felt a little too early for that, so instead, he threw an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry, man. I’m all about listening and shit. What classes do you take? Maybe we can meet up.”

He peeked up through his bangs. After a beat, he smiled. “I don’t think that would work.”

“Aw, come on. We'll figure something out." He held out a fistbump and, after a second of staring, smudgy bumped knuckles with him. Tad beamed at the feeling of acceptance. "Name's Tad. I guess you're Noah?"

Smudgey brightened, just a slight, like how a broken lightbulb might brighten. “You’ve heard of me?”

“Well, I see you around every now and then.”

Smudgy looked so shocked then. “You see me?”

“You see him?” Gansey echoed.

Lynch whipped his head around. “He sees him?”

“Indeed he does,” the old man toasted with a cup that Tad figured must have been tea. “How wonderful.”

Tad felt incredibly awkward. Perhaps this was an inside joke he was not privy to. “Uh…yeah, sure.”

“People don’t see me,” Noah whispered. “Not unless you guys introduce me first.”

“Like, a vampire?” Tad guessed.

“No, dumbass.” Tad jumped as the Lynch snapped at him, still hanging in his doorway like a vicious, caged animal. “Vampires have to be invited in first.”

“Of course you would know that. Not everyone’s a vampire like you, Lynch.”

Tad felt awfully impressed with his quick comeback until Lynch decided to take a step out of his room. As discreetly as he could, he inched closer to Dick Gansey.

The mutt, who had been preoccupied with trying to win over the other dog in the room, noticed the taller Aglionby then. His ears perked up and he charged, legs stiffened as he bounced across the floor as though riding into battle.

The Lynch stopped in his tracks, watching as the dog attacked his shoes.

“Gansey, what the fuck is this?”

“You have no room to question this,” Dick Gansey scolded. “You brought home a raven.”

Tad walked over and scooped up the snarling dog with the pose of a snooty lady retrieving her miniature poodle. Ignoring Lynch, he said to the dog, “Now, now. We do not associate with such people. Come, before this man’s bad language infects you.”

To that, the Lynch smiled and told him, “I will eat you alive.”

Tad swallowed a large pill of terror, wondering if the Lynch’s really did have a vampire in their family line somewhere.

Behind them, Noah giggled and Dick sighed. He guessed Dick Gansey would have said something then, but a second later, a phone began ringing.

“It’s Adam,” Gansey proclaimed, delighted as he read the name on his cell phone. “One moment, I will return shortly.”

To fight the rising tide of awkwardness, Tad sat on the nearby couch and held the mutt to him, scruffling his head.

He brightened as Noah decided to climb up onto the couch beside him.

“I like your dog.” He pointed to the mutt like a kid would.

“Thanks. He’s actually Parrish’s, I think.” He said. They both smiled as the mutt sniffed curiously at Noah. “I’ve got no clue what his name is.”

“I bet it’s Fluffy,” Noah guessed.

“What? Come on, this is Parrish’s dog. I bet his name is Einstein, or...what was the name of that guy with the apple?”

“Apple?”

“Yeah, the one where an apple fell on his head?”

“Isaac Newton?” Lynch answered callously.

Just to spite him, Tad said, “No, the other one.”

“Johnny Appleseed?” Noah guessed.

Tad finger gunned him. “Precisely.”

Lynch narrowed his already perpetually narrowed eyes. “You think he named his dog _Johnny?”_

Tad hissed, _“Yes.”_

As he had promised, Dick Gansey returned a few moments later.

“I just got off the phone with Jane,” he announced as he stepped back into the...into the…

What exactly was Tad standing in? The foyer? The living room? That didn't seem right, he could see a bed shoved sideways by the corner, which bugged him every time he saw it in his line of sight. The bed should have been pushed up against a wall, but it wasn't. It was simply plopped at an angle near the corner. It disturbed him greatly. He would have never done that even in a Sims game. It just wasn't human.

What was this then, a lobby? There were chairs and tables like a lobby, and there was the front door, much like a lobby. The issue was that there was still that bed.

Tad was starting to see why Adam didn’t want to live here with his friends.

Only when Tad heard the name “Adam” was his focus returned to the conversation.

“We’ll meet up with them there,” Gansey concluded.

“Where?” Tad asked.

Lynch snorted. “Weren’t you listening?”

“Obviously I wasn't if I'm asking." Tad shook his head, annoyed. “Duh.”

Lynch facepalmed.

Dick Gansey clapped his hands together to reclaim their attention. “Alright, let’s all take our leave now. Malory, we’ll be back.”

Tad was the last out the door, having to attempt to scoop up the mutt as he chased him around the...the…

Apartment?

What the fuck was Tad supposed to call this place?

He succeeded in picking up the mutt and followed the others outside.

The Lynch took shot-gun. No surprise there. Dick and the Lynch were so close that Tad fully believed they both must have had bracelets or pins or something with Best Friends Forever stamped on it from their childhood.

Tad wasn’t stupid—most of the time. He knew that anyone who dared toe the line of Lynch’s kinship with Dick would wind up dead, and Tad seriously doubted that Dick Gansey would be okay with driving around with someone dead in his car.

So instead, he happily took the backseat alongside Noah.

Like the others, Noah must have been there because there was something special about him, something beyond the ordinary. Tad could clearly see that there was, that the kid carried some strange presence about him, as though he was a little too still in the moment, a little too faded.

There was something ghostly about Noah, but if that ghostliness was removed, Tad could see a fellow Aglionby beneath the layer of strangeness. An actual fellow Aglionby, one that was about as outstanding as any other, an Aglionby like him.

The familiarity was a breath of fresh air, to have at least one other person in the room he could relate to, someone who wasn’t destined for greatness like Adam, Dick, and Lynch were.

While Tad sat, contentedly with petting the dog in his lap, Noah leaned in and whispered to him, “What are you thinking about?”

Tad stared down at the mutt, thinking that if Dick and the Lynch were so close, that left Tad open to get closer to someone else in their pack of strange and wonderful friends. They couldn’t all be Best Friends Forever, right? Each person only had room for one shot-gun, and Dick and Lynch had given that privilege to each other. Did that mean no one was in Adam's shot-gun?

Tad thought, and couldn’t come up with anyone who seemed _that_ close with Adam Parrish.

“Nothing,” Tad answered, looking up and smiling at him.

Noah smiled back, “That’s not nothing.”

Tad lost his smile. “What—”

Dick Gansey started the ignition, and the car’s engine drowned out the rest of Tad’s words.

When they arrived at the next stop, Tad experienced the same sensation when seeing it as he had with Mammoth Manufacturing.

He had no idea who this Jane was, but she sounded dainty, pretty, old-fashioned, and probably Englishy, since her name was Jane. He imagined that she must have either been a relative of Dick Gansey's or his girlfriend. Since they were arriving at her place, he pictured a fancy suburban household, like the one his parents' lived in, or an extravagant farmhouse like his Granddad's.

Instead, they passed by a big, handpainted sign stabbed into the front yard that read _Psychic Reading and Services._

His eyes slid over to the old, giant house behind the sign, also looking hand-painted. In the windows he spotted candles, on the porch he spotted overgrown potted plants. Shifting in the window were dreamcatchers, and mounted on either side of the stairs going up the porch were strange and ominous statues.

Tad hovered next to the car door while everyone else stepped out breezily.

“Why are we at a witch’s house?” he asked worriedly.

“Worried you’ll burn?” Lynch whispered in his ear.

Tad looked at him sideways. “Aren’t you Catholic?”

“There was once a time where I had to convince you to come here, if I recall," Dick mentioned with an innocent tilt of his chin, as though trying to remember.

The Lynch punched his shoulder. “Don’t you start telling people shit about me.”

“I never go in, either,” Noah added with a shrug. “I’ll just hang by the car.”

“You Christian too?” Tad asked.

He blinked as Noah laughed as though religion was a hilarious topic. He couldn’t tell if that was a hard yes or a hard no.

"You may wait out here too if you're uncomfortable," Dick Gansey assured him.

“What? Hell no! There’s, like, haunted things and potions and curses in there, right? I wanna see that shit.”

Ronan leaned into Dick Gansey and muttered, “We bring this guy along, he’s gonna wind up dead, just FYI.”

Dick glared at him. “Don’t give me any more reasons to worry, Ronan, my list is long enough as it is—Carruthers? Carru—Tad!”

_ding dong_

Tad waited giddily after he rang the doorbell.

Lynch didn’t move from his spot by the car. He merely gestured and said, “See?” while Dick hurried to meet up with Tad.

Spurred by the ringing, the mutt in his arms threw back his head and started howling. Tad patted his head and shushed him just in time for a woman to open the door.

Tad's eyes widened and so did his smile. She had large earrings, colorful clothing, and vibrant purple hair. She looked like she belonged on the cover of some widespread witch magazine. _Spellbound_ he imagined it might have been called.

“Cool,” he greeted.

She raised an eyebrow as she looked him over. “Dear God, she found another one.”

Tad tilted his head. “Huh?”

He jumped as the witch looked back into the house and boomed, “BLUE! Get down here and collect your boys!”

 _Blue?_ Tad felt his eyebrows pinching together. That was an odd-ass name, but he supposed a witch's name would be. He gandered that the witch in front of him was likely named Purple, but what had his head hurting, was that the name she had shouted sounded familiar. He had heard it before and he struggled to remember from who.

It occurred to him as soon as the crayon-named girl stepped into view.

“Oh my God, you’re the ex-girlfriend!”

The Lynch laughed. Dick was probably laughing too since he was covering his face. 

“Excuse me?” the ex asked him.

Tad felt that he had stumbled into a fairy tale as he looked her over. Her hair was chopped messily and pinned back by a thousand colorful barrettes. Her clothes were mix-matched and looked like nothing he had ever seen on the market, some strange combination of vintage and modern patchwork.

“No wonder you guys were together.” He saw her bemusement and explained. “You’re a witch, he’s a witch. It makes so much sense.”

_“What?”_

“So your name’s Blue, right? I’m surprised your hair’s not blue. I thought maybe that’s where you got your name. Especially since you’re a witch. Witches usually have brightly colored hair. You know, like that other lady that was just here—”

“Tad?”

He glanced back at Dick Gansey. “Yeah?”

Dick looked desperate as he pressed his hands together and placed them in front of his mouth. “Please stop talking.”

“No, no. Let him continue,” the witch named Blue said, snapping her fingers to catch Tad’s attention again. “What were you saying about me being a witch?”

“Just that I thought your hair would be different. Also, have you noticed that you’re like...really short? Like, is that a witch thing—”

Tad’s eyes widened as he was yanked back.

“That’s enough.” Dick Gansey laughed politely. He placed Tad behind him and spun to Blue. “Please, forgive him. I am deeply sorry on his behalf.”

“What?” Tad asked. “What’d I do?”

“Who is he and why is he here,” the witch demanded. “You’re not actually expecting me to let him into my house?”

“We’re here looking for Jane,” Tad answered with a shrug. He held up the dog in his arms. The dog wagged his tail furiously with all the new faces to lick. “We got your ex’s stuff and brought it here, which sounds really weird when I say that out loud. What the hell is so funny, Lynch?”

He glared as the taller boy stood in the back of their little congregation, a wicked smile on his face and shoulders occasionally shaking.

The witch shook her head, then explained, “I’m Jane.”

Confusion fell over Tad. “I thought you said your name was Blue?”

“It is, he just calls me that sometimes.” She gave a pointed look at Dick.

The confusion swirling in Tad’s mind was then shot through by shock. If _Jane_ was Dick's girlfriend, but _Blue_ was Adam's ex—

“Wait, so you’re Dick’s girlfriend?” He spun on him. “Dude, is Adam okay with this? That is not cool, bro.”

Dick Gansey sputtered which, to Tad, was proof of guilt. If was a judge and they were in a court he would have just brought his gavel down and claimed him guilty.

“As a former crew teammate, bro, I have every right to inform you that that is fucked up,” Tad told him. The dog in his arms had started growling, most likely at Tad’s shift in tone, but Tad would rather think of it as the mutt taking his side.

“No, I am not anyone’s girlfriend.” The little witch marched right up to him, her feet, clothed in mix-matched socks, almost stepping on Tad’s shoes. She poked him in the chest. “It may come as a shocker to you, but not every woman is in a relationship with a man.”

Tad stiffened. He made an “oo” motion with his lips as it dawned on him. His ears burned. He wanted to smack his forehead but refrained. He had made a fool out of himself. Not an uncommon occurrence, but always an uncomfortable one. In front of friends of Adam's, it was mortifying.

“Oh, you're a lesbian. Oh, fuck. Shit, my bad.” He held up his hands. “I’m really sorry. That one’s on me.”

So that was why she had broken it off with Adam. That had been bothering him since he had found out, wondering how any girl could want to break up with someone like Adam Parrish. It all made sense now.

The Lynch draped himself over the railing and wheezed.

“Bro,” Tad said to him, “I fail to see what is so goddamn funny.”

“Dear Lord,” Dick Gansey said into his hands while the lesbian witch hissed next to him, “Where the hell did you get this guy?”

Purple reappeared in the doorway, a wickedly amused smile on her brightly colored lips. “We just finished making tea. Care to invite all your friends in, Blue?”

Blue whipped around to glare at her but said nothing.

“Yes, please.” Dick Gansey looked up from his hands. “Tea would be delightful.”

“I like tea,” Tad pipped.

A third witch popped her head around the doorway. Her name must have been Snow or something, as long white hair cascaded down her shoulders and hung off of her like a bellowing curtain as she leaned.

She had big, owlish eyes that blinked curiously as she asked him, “What kind of tea?”

Tad’s brain searched his records and came up blank.

“I dunno. The good kind?"

"Oh, you're going to be a fun one," Purple said. She shared a mischievous grin with Snow before they both disappeared back into the house.

Tad was about to ask the others what the witches could possibly mean by that, it had sounded like a threat to Tad, but Dick Gansey and Blue had gotten into an intense, hushed discussion, despite the fact that Tad could still hear everything they were saying.

“We can’t let him into the house!” she snapped.

"I wouldn't have brought him along if I didn't trust things would work themselves out," he assured.

The Lynch was simply watching this all with amusement.

Therefore, Tad was the only one who picked up on the sound of an oncoming car.

Well, the mutt was the one who had picked up on the sound, ears perking up, tail stiffening, muzzle pulling back as he prepared another bout of howling. The dog turned its head and Tad turned to follow the same direction.

He spotted the car further down the road.

His world immediately got brighter.

“Parrish is here!”

He announced it because he felt it was worthy of an announcement, but then wondered if perhaps he should have kept it a private thing, a secret to himself. He looked back in time to watch several heads whip in his direction.

He was a purebred Aglionby, yapping at a visitor who had come to the door, not even fully aware of nature’s finest canines surrounding him.

Most notably, there was Ronan Lynch. Lynch, as tall, as lethal, as unpredictable as a wolf born and raised in some iced slick mountain range far beyond the comforts of civilization.

Then there was Blue (Jane?), a mixed breed, but one with magic powers, like a familiar or a messenger owl who followed mages on fantastical adventures, and thus her mixed-breed status was forgiven.

Dick Gansey, a purebred like he, but whereas Tad was more of the Chihuahua variety, he marched along as proud as a Spaniel, as gorgeous as a Setter, as refined as one of those dogs with names that were never pronounced correctly aside from the breeders who demanded how you dared just called their Treeing Tennesse Brindle a “hound,” you _heathen._

Then there was Noah, also a purebred, and also a Chihuahua like Tad, but unlike Tad, Noah came in a rare and amazing coloration, the kind breeders charged an extra five hundred dollars for if they decided to sell that pup at all.

Tad’s heart sank like a rock thrown in the ocean.

In a dog show where Adam was the judge, why would he even look twice at Tad? Why would he even look once?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year everyone! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	8. And Then The Roof Caved In

_A shout, a crash, Adam’s name—_

_He didn’t remember the decision to move, only his feet already running to the door._

_Outside, the courtyard looked like a set piece for a play: Two dozen students dotted the green, but none of them were moving. A slow, pale cloud moved among them, slowly settling. Everyone’s attention was turned toward the corner of the green where Henry had been standing._

_But it was Adam’s name he’d heard._

_He saw the topmost area of the scaffolding hung crookedly, the workmen staring down from their positions on the roof._

_Dust. That’s what the cloud was. From whatever had fallen from the scaffolding. The slate tiles._

Adam.

 _Gansey shoved through the students. He saw Henry first, then Ronan, unharmed but powdered like Pompeii corpses. He made eye contact with Ronan—_ Is he alright? _—and he didn’t recognize Ronan’s expression._

_There was Adam._

_He was standing, very still, his hands by his sides. His chin was tilted up in a wary, fragile sort of way, and his eyes narrowed at nothing. Unlike Ronan and Henry, he was dustless. Gansey saw the jerk of his chest as it rose and fell._

_Around him lay hundreds of shattered slate tiles. The pieces exploded out for a dozen yards, dug into the grass like missiles._

_But the ground around Adam was bare in a perfect circle._

_It was this circle, this impossible circle, that the other students stared at. Some of them were taking photos on their phones._

_No one was talking to Adam. It wasn't difficult to understand this: Adam didn't look like someone you could talk to, just then. There was something more frightening about him than there was about the circle. Like the bare ground, there was nothing inherently unusual about his appearance. But in context, surrounded by these brick buildings, he didn't..._ belong.

* * *

  
It happened fast.

One second Tad had spotted Adam, walking side by side with the prince known by the name of Dick Gansey and his vicious dog known as Ronan Lynch. The other Aglionbies made room for the three, knowing this trio, knowing the space they needed, knowing how this worked.

In the next second those three had stopped by Henry Cheng, the man still crazing over his petition and stabbing picket signs into the courtyard’s grass.

The next second Dick Gansey had left to enter the faculty room, maybe to get a coffee or something, Tad didn’t know. He only cared that it had created one less person to weave around to get to the person he wanted.

The next second Tad had told Laureate, “Gimme a sec, I’m gonna go talk to them,” and by _them_ he meant _him._

The second after that Laureate had squared him with a withering look and hardly disguised suspicion as he asked, “Why?”

And in the second after that, the tiles on the roof had fallen.

Men had been working on the roof, something that Tad hadn’t cared to think about until the scaffolding had made the cracking sound of an impending crash. The roof hung right by Henry Cheng and Ronan Lynch.

It hung directly over Adam.

After the night Tad had seen the three-eyed bird monster, he thought nothing else could ever slice his heart with more fear.

_“Adam!”_

Hearing the name, Dick Gansey had burst out of the faculty room, but Tad didn’t care about that.

He abandoned his post by Laureate and charged ahead, pushing aside student after student until he had broken into the circle they were surrounding. The dust continued to ebb and dissipate around his calves as he ran through it.

In the center of the circle of gathering onlookers, Adam Parrish stood unharmed. Tad felt dizzy with the amount of air that he sucked in with relief.

“Parrish,” he heard Dick Gansey say. “Adam. What happened?”

Tad watched as Adam’s eyes slid over to Gansey but his head didn’t turn. It was the stillness that made him seem so... _other._

He heard the Lynch say to the crowd, “I like how you losers thought Instagram before first aid. Fuck off.”

He heard Henry correct him, “No, don’t fuck off. Notify a teacher that there’s some men on the roof who are about to be sued.”

Tad’s face pinched up, endlessly irritated that Adam was clearly having an issue here, in the middle of the school courtyard, and all his friends could do was babble. He tried to block out everyone else’s voices.

He approached Adam and whispered his name. He settled two fingers over his elbow to see if he would notice.

Adam did, it seemed, barely.

“Scaffolding failed,” Adam said in a low voice. An expression was now appearing on his face, but it, too, was unfamiliar: wonder. “Everything failed.”

“You are the luckiest man in this school,” Henry said. “How are you not dead, Parrish?”

Tad tried to swallow, only for it to get caught in his throat at such a thought. He wanted to pelt Henry for even saying that.

“It's your bullshit signs," Lynch suggested, looking vastly less concerned than Tad believed he should have felt. "It created a bullshit force field."

 _I’m about to deck all these people,_ Tad thought viciously.

Gansey leaned and Adam pulled him in even closer, gripping his shoulder tightly. Right into Gansey’s ear, he whispered, voice tinged with disbelief, “I didn’t—I just asked—I just _thought_ —“

“Thought what?” Gansey asked.

Adam released him. His eyes were on the circle around them. “I thought _that._ And it happened.”

Tad’s eyes were drawn to the circle then.

The circle was absolutely perfect: dust without, dustless within.

Tad glanced uneasily at those nearest to him: Henry, Gansey, the Lynch, and Adam Parrish.

They were speaking as though no one else was privy to their conversation, and to an extent, they would be right. The crowd gaping and talking around them were far too distracted, and just a few feet too far away, to hear their words. Tad was the only one, uninvited it seemed, to be able to hear their words.

And their words were very weird.

“You marvelous creature,” Gansey said to Adam, for once sounding as though he had run out of words to say.

Tad silently agreed with him but thought his choice of words odd. Marvelous, yes, but creature…

His eyes looked over Adam, still so very still.

_Creature._

“I told you,” the Lynch said to Gansey and Adam, smile sharp and full of arrogance. “Magician.”

_Magician._

Tad didn't want to leave his side. Out of curiosity, out of concern, but the world seemed aligned to keep him and Adam apart, he swore to God.

As soon as the teachers rushed out to investigate, they called for everyone to return to their scheduled classes. They pulled aside Adam and his friends to speak with him, to make sure they were alright. Tad supposed even the teachers knew he was not a member of Adam’s private circle, for they did not beckon for him to follow. When he tried, Laureate appeared to drag him away.

Tad did not get another chance to speak with Adam for the rest of the day.

He lied in bed that night, staring up at a ceiling he could barely see through the dark. Every now and then, he would glance at the glowing red numbers of his alarm clock, watching the hours slip later and later into the night.

“Hey, Laurie,” he whispered. “You awake?”

He had half the thought to throw something at him and wake him, but his best friend had already been perpetual mad at him. He doubted he’d be any happier if he jostled him at—he checked the clock again—twenty minutes past midnight.

He sighed and settled back down. He didn’t think Laureate could help him anyway, not with the thoughts keeping him awake.

Over and over those strange words went around his head.

_Magician, magician, magician._

_Creature, creature, creature._

Through the words, words that played like background music to a movie, he replayed what had almost happened to Adam. What had happened, but could have been so much worse.

He rubbed his chest, feeling pain there. He never thought he could feel worry so intensely enough for it hurt, but it did. His face scrunched up with the sensation.

He didn’t like the idea of Adam being in a position where something could harm him, but the more he thought about it, the more Adam always seemed to be in harm’s way.

Or maybe it wasn’t Adam. Maybe it was Aglionby, or even all of Henrietta.

Names and faces flashed across Tad’s vision.

Colton Armhandle, or whatever his name was, had become their new Latin teacher because the last one had gone missing and been found dead in a forest by police.

Joseph Kavinsky, the academy's most notorious troublemaker, a celebrity in the halls of Aglionby, had died in a firework accident during his annual July Fourth party only a few short weeks ago.

Niall Lynch, Ronan Lynch’s father, had been murdered in front of their house a couple of years back.

Perhaps it was that three-eyed bird that was killing all of Henrietta’s residents, flying around, murdering people.

That didn’t concern Tad quite as much as he gandered it should have. What took up his concern were thoughts of Adam and how he always seemed to be connected, somehow, to all of these dead people.

Professor Whelk, the teacher who had died, had taken great interest in Adam and his friends right before he had died.

Now that Tad thought about it, so had Kavinsky.

And then there was Ronan Lynch, who, unsurprisingly, had people out to kill his family, and Adam had looked at him and decided _I want to be friends with that._

So much death, and just that day death had seemed to have wanted a taste of Adam when it had tried to knock portions of the roof on top of him.

Tad scrubbed his hands down his face and made a strained noise through his palms.

The words echoing in his head— _magician, magician_ and _creature, creature_ —had shifted into another language without his permission.

_Magus, magus, magus._

_Creatura, creatura, creatura._

At least this time they were pretty self-explanatory. He was getting tired of hearing Latin words he didn’t understand.

He didn’t know when he had fallen asleep, just that it had been way too soon when his alarm had woken him up.

He didn’t talk to anyone during the entirety of getting ready for the school day, of waiting for his turn to use the showers, of eating breakfast in the dining hall. It was strange of him, he knew that, he knew by the looks his crewmates were sending him over the table, but he’d assure them that he was fine later. First, he had to make sure that Adam was fine.

Only to realize that Adam hadn’t shown up that day.

That was a red flag. Tad could see the flag, feel it wrapping around his throat and suffocating him.

While following the transition of students down the hall, he whispered under his breath, “Have you seen Parrish?”

Laureate's entire face pinched up as though Tad had just mentioned his mortal enemy. "No.”

“I can’t find him anywhere.”

“So?”

“So, that’s insanely weird. Adam never misses school. He could lose a leg and still come to school.”

“I fail to see why we should give a fuck,” Laureate decided, eyes returning to straight ahead.

Tad shook his head, realizing he wasn’t going to get any help from his best friend.

"Where are you going?" Laureate asked disbelievingly as Tad marched directly past World History. "You're going to miss class."

“Just get notes for me,” Tad told him without turning around.

His friend hissed after him, “I will not!”

Tad flipped him off over his shoulder and didn’t look back.

He traveled down the halls until he located someone over the age of nineteen.

He spotted the Aglionby secretary and called out her name.

The lady in question, her eyeliner already smudged and it was only morning, quirked an eyebrow at him as he ran up to her. “I could have sworn you you should be in History right about now.”

“Do you know where Adam Parrish is? Is he hurt from yesterday?” Tad didn’t think Adam had been hurt at all, but he needed some excuse as to why he needed to find him.

“Oh, no. Mr. Parrish is perfectly fine,” she said, offering absolutely nothing else.

“Okay. So, um...Where is he?”

She frowned then. “Well, that would be private business of Mr. Parrish’s, now wouldn’t it?”

“Private?”

_You’re going to make a fool of yourself in that courtroom._

Tad's heart plummeted.

“That’s right. Now, go on and get back to class before you’re marked tardy.” She waved at him with her pencil. “If you haven’t already.”

"Yes, ma'am," Tad said, immediately going back to the hall he came. As soon as the clip of heels echoed away, he glanced back, saw that she had gone, and dashed down a different hallway.

He ran up three flights of stairs. He rummaged in his pockets and flashed a pizza receipt at two teachers who eyed him as he hurried by, posing it as a hall pass. He let out a breath as he got away with it with nothing more than one of them shouting after him, “Mr. Carruthers, no running!”

He slowed into a brisk walk, kept walking until he turned the corner, then burst into a sprint again.

His shoes made horrendous squeaking noises as he skidded past the door he needed.

_bang bang bang_

When no one answered after .05 seconds, Tad hit the door faster.

_bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang—_

The door flew opened to revealed a displeased teacher behind it.

“I hope you have a good explanation for disrupting this class, young man.”

Of course he had a good explanation. His disheveled appearance could only be explained by way of a good explanation.

“Richa—“ He heaved an inhale. “I have an urgent message for Richard Gansey and, and Ronan Lynch. Aren’t they in—“ Another heave. “—in this class?”

By the way he saw two heads lean across their desks to peek out the door, one with the shaved head of a prisoner and the other with the curly bronze of a seaside prince, Tad had guessed correctly.

The teacher still looked down on him with the same unconvinced scowl until Gansey and Lynch leapt from their seats.

“Mr. Milo, if we may?” Gansey asked.

The teacher perked up a little with the prince’s approval. “Oh. Of course, Mr. Gansey. Make it quick.”

As soon as the professor shut the door behind them, Gansey and Lynch went to open their mouths, but Tad beat them to it.

“Do you know when Adam’s court date is?”

He didn’t want a single soul other than the two in front of him (if Lynch did have a soul) to hear, but the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream made it difficult to reign in a whisper. His body shook with the primal need to scream.

Shock widened both of the boys' eyes. They glanced at each other quickly and then at Tad in disbelief and a splash of horror.

“How’d you know about that?” Lynch threatened,

“Mr. Carruthers,” Gansey said in a low, diplomatic voice, his own version of a threat, “this is a very private matter—”

“He wasn’t in World Hist. with me.”

Tad watched as blood drained from both their faces.

 _“Well, no shit, Parrish!”_ Tad remembered telling Adam that night. _“You never tell me anything. I don’t even think you tell your friends everything—“_

His panic rose to match the two in front of him. “It’s not today, is it?”

The two of them shared several more rapid, horrified glances.

“God damn it, Parrish,” the Lynch sputtered.

Tad blurted out before he could stop, “He can’t go there all by himself!”

Not alone, not with that man in the court with him. He remembered how Adam had acted when that man had shown up at his doorstep.

He hadn’t been entirely certain if the two boys in front of him knew about Adam’s father.

By the black rage that fell over their faces, he realized they did.

Gansey pointed a sharp finger at him. “Agreed. Lynch,” he then shoved a pair of keys into Lynch’s hand, “you two get to the Pig.”

Tad’s brain short-circuited. “The what?"

He no idea what the hell that was. A code word? Of course these fuckers would have code words. It seemed to Tad that these two had forgotten they were in the presence of someone not fluent in their special friendship language.

Gansey opened the door to the classroom. “Mr. Milo, a pressing situation requires our immediate attention—”

Tad jumped as Lynch's large hand snatched his wrist. "Move your ass, Todd."

A sharp pain went down his arm as the Lynch yanked him into a sprint and Tad wondered if the guy had just dislocated his shoulder.

He wrenched his hand free from him. This left the risk of Lynch leaving him behind with his unfairly long legs, but Tad wasn't about to let that happen. He forced himself to keep pace, even when he had just run all the way up to this floor.

“It’s _Tad,_ you asshole.”

“You shouldn’t even know about this,” the Lynch snapped from a foot or two ahead.

“And you should but you don’t!” Tad may have been battling for every breath but he would find the power to argue. “You’re welcome for telling you!”

“We don’t need your damn help!”

“Then where would you be, Lynch? Finding the—" He heaved. "—the perimeter of a triangle?"

“That was English back there, dumbass!”

“I’m surprised you’re even at class at all!” This really wasn’t the time but Tad was pulling out all of his weapons. “How the fuck are you gonna graduate when you’re never here? Oh, that’s right! You’re not.”

He could see that he had landed a hit by the way Lynch’s lips pulled back like a snarling animal.

“How the hell do you even know Adam?” he shouted.

“No running!” one of the teachers from before, now in the middle of the hallway, yelled at them. She shrieked and dropped her books as they ran around her.

“Why does that even matter!” Tad shouted back.

“I don’t know where the fuck you came from but none of us want you here,” the Lynch hissed.

That was Lynch’s hit, and it had landed.

Tad swallowed. “You think I give a shit about what you think?”

He did. He shouldn’t have but he really kind of did.

They both burst out of the doors and ran it into the parking lot. Lynch located the orange Camaro and rounded it to the driver’s side, while Tad crashed into its hood and flopped across it. He clutched it to keep from sliding off and onto the asphalt.

“Can’t—” He sucked in air. “Can’t breathe.”

“Quit bitchin’,” Lynch said, a little bit winded at most. He must have built up his endurance and leg strength from years of running away from law enforcement. Tad screamed as Lynch laid on the horn. “What are you waiting for? Get your ass in the back!”

Tad pulled open the backdoor and took up the entire row of the backseat by flopping on it. He rolled onto his back and lied an arm across his eyes as his chest rose and fell in violent shudders. He was a rower, not a runner.

Lynch was letting out a stream of creative curses in the front, all strung together like he trying to cram as many obscenities as he could within ten seconds. In between the curses, the car's engine made strange noises.

Tad sucked in enough of a breath to ask, “What’s wrong?”

“This is not the fucking time,” Lynch sneered, not at Tad but at the car.

Tad pushed himself up, worry returning. “What is it?”

Dick Gansey appeared, originally a rower himself and it showed by how out of breath he was as he joined Lynch by the driver’s seat. His gaze flicked between Lynch and the key he kept turning in the ignition.

“What’s happening?”

“What do you think?” Lynch struck the keys to the right again. The Camaro sputtered and screamed. “It’s not working!”

Tad jumped out of the vehicle. He slammed a hand against the roof to grab their attention. Dick looked mildly offended by that until Tad asked, “How far is it to the courtroom?”

They both picked up on the challenge and glanced at each other. Lynch scrambled out of the car and shoved the keys back into Dick Gansey’s hand.

“We’re going to have to run it,” Dick said, locking the car. He glanced up and sputtered as Tad was already sprinting out of the parking lot. “Carruthers!”

“Keep up, old man!” Lynch shouted and ran ahead.

Lynch quickly passed Tad and took the lead, but Tad would be damned if he let him stay ahead of him. He pumped his legs and managed to keep at a pace of two steps behind him, but he wondered if Lynch was going just a bit slower for Dick’s sake, who took up the back.

Tad saw Lynch, mid-run, pulling apart his tie and re-tying it. He hadn’t thought Lynch even knew how to correctly knot a tie, but here he was, doing just that while on the run, just for Adam.

Tad felt a little bit better know that Adam had people like them to back him up.

They slowed, only so they wouldn’t faceplant the doors, as they made their way up the stairs to the courtroom.

Tad reached for the handle and blinked as Dick Gansey snatched his wrist.

“Carruthers, I’m sorry,” he managed to say, breathless, “but Ronan’s a witness and I’ve known about this ordeal for some time. It’s better if you—”

Tad didn’t need for him to continue. “I get it, I get it! Just hurry!"

He yanked the doors open and watched as the two boys ran inside without him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! I hope the New Year has been treating all of you well and that you've enjoyed this chapter! Unfortunately, as you can see, Adam wasn't very present in today's chapter, and believe me, Tad's just as upset over it. XD But the two of them will be going on more adventures together soon! I still have no idea what this story even is—a romcom?—but I am enjoying it! I hope you guys are too! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	9. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

_Feeling was coming back, but it was unfocused and dull. Shimmering and fuzzy. It wasn’t going to be him and her. It wasn’t going to be him and Gansey. There was no more_ not here, not now. _It was here. It was now. It was just going to be him and Cabeswater._

I am unknowable.

* * *

  
It had become a combination of the newest joke told in the academy's halls and the stuff of legends that was somehow both funny and not funny at all. There was also a rumor going around, that the teachers had joined forces to exact vengeance on their students for making them drink every weekend.

“In one month's time, Aglionby Academy, in all of its one-hundred-and-fifteen-year existence, will be celebrating its first school dance."

The entire class laughed.

The secretary didn’t.

The class stopped laughing.

Smiles fell from the students’ faces as they realized as a collective that she wasn’t joking.

Suddenly, every student found the skill of their debate classes that they never seemed to use for any of the debate classes’ assignments.

The secretary’s expression went entirely flat as she listened to the students protest in turn. Behind her, at his desk, Colton Armhandle watched this all with mild amusement and not all mild disdain.

“You expect us to dance with each other?” Laureate demanded, grinning as the class around him laughed at the absurd idea. "Last I checked, this was an all-boys school."

“Unless you count Jamie,” one student piped. More laughter followed.

Jamie, famously known for his pretty face and eyelashes, looked to have been contemplating stabbing the kid who had spoken with his pencil.

“I’m glad you asked,” the secretary said with a pointed look at Laureate. Worried returned to the classroom. _I’m glad you asked_ was never a good thing to hear. “I’m sure you all remember the joint funding provided by our sister school earlier this year?”

Crickets.

“Which allowed us to order new equipment for extra-curricular activities? Such as band, rowing?”

Cricket, cricket.

“Jesus Christ,” she mumbled under her breath, then clapped her hands together. “Alright! With great thanks to them for extending the invitation, we will be taking the entire school to St. Mercy's School for Girls for our first ever school dance! This way, we will be able to give both schools the experience of a prom that they have been sorely missing out on for so many generations. We have invited a dance instructor for the month to begin teaching—”

Screams of panic filled the classroom. Colton Armhandle winced with all of the yelling but made no move to try and tamper it.

* * *

  
Dance class was an epic fail.

Pour in a jumbled heap of poorly suppressed nerves, several cups of reluctance, a tablespoon of laughing at everything as a coping method, and then spike it with anxiety; mix it together in a shaker as violently as you could and you had the perfect recipe for disaster.

The lesson hadn’t begun yet but the teacher was already thoroughly disappointed with all of them, looking to be considering discussing with his agent to be contracted out elsewhere.

“I’ll have you know I’m in contact with St. Mercy’s so that we may provide the same dance lessons,” the teacher informed. “They are already three steps ahead while all of you are still getting through this tutorial.”

Some students averted their gazes out of shame; others rubbed their noses with their middle fingers.

The teacher sighed for the fourteenth time since the class had begun. Because of a bet, Tad and Laureate had been counting.

“You will be representing Aglionby Academy at the most prestigious girl's school in Virginia," he said, arms crossing. "Is there anyone here who's even willing to learn these steps? If not, then you are dismissed until tomorrow's lesson."

He waved a hand at the door. It took them a hot second, but once they realized they had been permitted to leave, the hoard of boys flocked to the door, some at break-neck speed. The teacher did not look at all surprised.

Tad laughed at some gesture Laureate made until he noticed someone out of the corner of his eye, hanging back in the corner of the room.

“I’m glad you decided to stay, Mr. Parrish,” the teacher was telling him.

Tad halted.

“Sweet Jesus, Tad, no. No!” Laureate looked thoroughly pained as he stopped too. “Come on, man, why? Why would you do this to me? We’ve got a whole hour to do jack shit until our next class.”

He poked Tad’s head repeatedly with his finger as though trying to activate the comprehensive thinking part of his brain.

An entire hour of free time, and Tad could see the appeal, but it paled in comparison to standing in the same room as Adam Parrish.

Tad sighed, giving his best friend a sheepish grin and a shrug.

“I probably need all the help I can get,” he said. “You know I have two left feet.”

Laureate’s gaze flicked between Tad and the handful of boys staying behind to finish out the class. He spotted Adam, and Tad watched as flames engulfed his best friend’s eyes.

“Is it because of Parrish?”

Tad blinked, shocked.

Before he could say anything, his friend spun on his heels with a snapped, “Whatever.”

“Laurie, you know you can stay too—”

“I said _whatever.”_

Several students parted ways for Laureate—fellow band members, judging by the glares they shot at Tad. One flipped him off before joining the others, flanking Laureate and following him out of class. It reminded Tad partially of an emotional support group, partially of a set of bodyguards.

Tad tried to gulp but his throat felt dry. What did he do? If it was enough that the band knew about it, it must have been bad.

“You. What’s your name?”

Tad jumped and looked over his shoulder. The dance instructor still had his arms crossed.

“Um. Tad.”

He sighed for the fifteenth time. “As I stated at the beginning of this class, we will only call people by their last names here, young man.”

“Oh, right. I remember.” Tad did not, but it was better if he pretended that he did. “It’s Carruthers.”

“Well, Mr. Carruthers. Come join us if you’re here to stay.”

Tad glimpsed at the tiny collection of stragglers left behind. A group of dudes who all blended in like a backdrop, and then Adam.

Tad grinned down at his shoes so the teacher wouldn’t see. His chest felt all warm. “Coming.”

A few of the boys brightened when they saw that Tad had joined their group. Tad had never really given much thought to popularity, but he supposed he wasn’t that bad. Everyone always knew they were in for a good time when he walked into the scene.

Except Adam, maybe. Adam gave a not at all discreet sigh when Tad saddled up next to him.

Suddenly, Tad wished he was the most popular Aglionby in the Academy, or at least one of the most popular, so Adam would be excited to see him.

“So you decided to stay too, huh?” he whispered to Adam, as though it was a coincidence that they were here together. “How come?”

“Shh,” Adam whispered back.

“I’ve been in dance since I was three,” one boy answered in Adam’s stead, looking at his nails. “I’m here to make you all look as bad as you are.”

“You’re an inspiration to us all, Jamie.”

Tad glared at them, wondering how any of them could have thought he meant for them to answer.

“My little sister really wants me to show her a couple of moves when I get home.”

“Mom went to St. Mercy’s and she knows the teachers there so...”

“If I can show dad I can dance he said he’ll take us out to pizza tonight!”

“I’m dating a ballerina.”

“You are so not.”

“I _am._ Her name’s Cialina.”

“And she’s from Canada, right?”

“Why are you here?” one asked Tad.

His face burned. “Um...”

"Enough!" Instructor Jackass snapped. "The rest of you will be dismissed if you continue this non-dance-related chatter."

"But it is dance-related!"

He clapped his hands. In the empty room, with sleek floors and mirrored walls, the sound blasted them with enough force to make them jump.

_Instructor Jackass used Sonic Boom._

_It was super effective!_

“Pay attention.” By the way he stared at them, Tad had a feeling that if one of them were to suddenly start convulsing on the floor, the instructor would continue the lesson. "Since I severely doubt you will be able to be successful in more than one dance, we will be pouring all of our efforts into the most important one—"

“Conga!”

The instructor looked like he wanted to set that kid on fire. “The waltz, and as you know, the waltz is a two-person dance, so I will be pairing all of you up. Line up against the wall and I will choose based on height and how well I think you’re capable of listening.”

Tad had stopped breathing. His eyes flicked to Adam, panic making his blood pound in his ears.

 _Okay, don’t panic,_ he told himself. _You guys are just here to do some physical fitness training. It’s just like when doing trust falls with the crew._

He had a flashback of their last trust fall training. He frowned as he remembered hitting the mats several times over and then the coach prying him away from the crewmate he had in a headlock.

 _Okay, so not exactly like that then,_ Tad amended, _but similar. It’s just like having a spotter with weights or something. No big deal._

He stole a glimpse at Adam and imagined him as his spotter. For whatever reason, his brain decided to take him to the time that he had been lying back with his back on a gym bench, a crewmate straddling him while he helped Tad lift a bar.

Tad's face burned. It burned so hotly he wanted to run outside and throw himself into the Aglionby lake.

He didn’t understand. When the crewmate had sat above him, they had laughed a little over it but then dove right into how much weight Tad could handle lifting. If Tad swapped that crewmate from his memory and replaced him with Adam…

He couldn’t breathe.

This was a mistake. He should have just followed Laureate out of class and wasted time with him until World History.

The instructor went down the poorly arranged line, calling on names while Tad tried not to sweat through his gym shirt. He pulled at the collar.

He jumped when the instructor called his name.

“And Mr. Carruthers, you’re tall, so I’ll pair you with Mr. Halls.”

“Are you insinuating I’m short?” Jamie demanded.

Tad let out a breath. He felt so much relief, he wanted to collapse onto the floor.

“And Mr. Parrish,” the instructor said, giving his first smile and awarding it to Adam Parrish. “Since we’re at an odd number, you’ll be dancing with me today.”

Ah, so Adam would get one-on-one time with the teacher himself. He could see that Adam was pleased with this prospect. Adam loved teachers, but he hated Aglionbies—aside from his little circle of friends, of course.

“Thank you, sir,” Adam said with a grateful smile to the instructor.

And that’s when Tad saw it. The relieved smile fell from his face as he looked Adam over, not liking what he was seeing.

An extra batter to Adam’s long, fair-colored lashes.

An eager glimmer in his eyes.

An almost bashful tilt of his head.

A _blush._

Tad fumed enough that Jamie glanced at him in concern. Oh, what—Would Adam much rather blush and grin and twirl around this pompous jackass than with Tad?

He had seen Adam exhibit this kind of behavior around teachers before, especially hot teachers. He had been completely infatuated with Armhandle at the beginning, which Tad knew he would be, the moment he had seen Armhandle walk into that class.

Just the other day, Tad had decked a crewmate into the lake for making a joke about Adam being a “teacher’s pet”, but now he was furious because that crewmate had been right. Tad had known he had been right at the time, but it was different seeing Adam completely own up to the title.

If Adam hadn’t been such a genius, Tad might have started imagining things he shouldn’t, imagining Adam getting a little too comfortable with teachers like Armhandle or this stuck-up instructor. He might have started to imagine scenarios where Adam might curl a lock of his hair around one of his long fingers, might wink when a professor looked his way, might lick his lip.

_“Gee, Professor,” Adam would say, biting the end of his pencil. “I’d do anything to get an A.”_

“Bro,” Jamie whispered, “are you okay?”

Tad felt an irrational surge of anger take him by storm. What did this pompous, glorified tap-dancer have to offer that was more impressive than what Tad could offer Adam as a dance partner? Tad knew the answer: _Nothing._

Willing to die on this hill, Tad shot his hand straight up and proclaimed, “Excuse me, but I think you've made a misstep."

The instructor looked so tired and the lesson hadn’t even begun yet. "I am not open to constructive criticism at this time, Mr. Carruthers."

“In my experience—“ which was very little, “—only the best of people take constructive criticism and in my knowledgeable opinion, it is very demeaning to assume two people can't dance to their full potential based on body type alone."

Three students shot their fists into the air, one of them being Jamie.

“Yeah!” they cheered.

Sigh number sixteen.

“Honestly, break the mold, man, it’s the twenty-first century!” Tad continued. “I think _you_ should dance with Jamie. Maybe he can teach you a thing or two.”

Jamie crossed his arms smugly as he leveled a glare at the instructor. "I mean if he dares.”

All of the few boys in the room clapped proudly at Tad and Jamie, excluding Adam, who looked positively venomous.

The instructor waved them all off. “Fine, fine, but any other input stops now, or we will never get to the actual lesson.”

Tad never felt more satisfied. Unfortunately, the high from it didn’t last long.

“Okay, I’m not going to waste time saying both your names when we have an entire class of boys with us, some of you with names like—“ The instructor glanced down at a notepad he had picked up from a podium, glaring at a name and then at one boy in particular. “—Vandenlangenber.”

Vandenlangenber raised him the middle finger.

“I am deducting a point from your grade for that.”

Vandenlangenber raised his other hand.

"You little shits—So you're going to pick team names. This will also assist you in building a bond since a waltz is a relationship between leader and—"

Bouts of snorting and giggling rippled through the classroom. Adam rolled his eyes. Tad wanted to crack his head against one of the mirrors and send himself away in an ambulance.

The instructor inhaled deeply before he released his seventeenth sigh. “I’m going to need ibuprofen after this.”

“So what he’s saying is, who’s top and who’s bottom,” one Aglionby said with an elbow at his partner.

“Kill your egos, you’ll all be taking turns over who follows and who leads,” the instructor said, scribbling something down on the notepad.

“So what he’s saying is, we’re all switches,” the same kid said.

Eighteenth sigh.

“Just pick a team name, or I will pick one for you.” The way he said that, combined with his expression as he said that, made it arguably a threat.

Not wanting to lose their privilege, the boys paired up with their partners and dove into hushed tones, as though their team name was meant to be anonymous until the big reveal.

“So, um, any ideas?” he whispered to Adam. He didn’t think he himself could come up with any suggestions, not with how his brain malfunctioned whenever he was near Adam.

“I really don’t care,” Adam supplied helpfully.

“Um...” Tad twiddled his thumbs as he thought. He tried to avoid Adam’s eyes. Adam still looked mad at him. “How about...”

He had said “how about”, but he hadn’t had any ideas to go with after that. He had been hoping Adam might take the cue and finish the sentence for him, but he guessed not.

With Adam glaring at him expectantly, he decided to roll the dice for a random answer. “Peanut Brittle.”

Adam made a face. “What? No.”

“Why? I love peanut brittle.”

“Still no.”

“I don’t know, Chips and Dip? You’ll be Chips and I’ll be Dip?”

Another face. “No.”

Tad finger-gunned him. “Flaming Hot Cheetos! That’s gonna be my band name if I ever start one.”

Adam pressed his fist to his forehead. “Do you have anything that's not food-related?"

Tad considered. “Uh...”

Adam lowered his fist. “Fine. What’s the number you had for your team?”

Tad cocked his head. “My crew team? It’s thirteen. Why?”

Adam nodded as though in approval. “That’s our name. Team 13.”

Tad didn’t know how to respond at first. “Team 13? You’re naming us after...after my place on the...after, after me—?”

He jumped a mile as the instructor clapped his hands together again.

_Instructor Jackass used Sonic Boom!_

_Tad Carruthers fainted!_

"Alright, line up with your partners and tell me the names you've decided. It goes without saying that I will change any ones I deem inappropriate."

Two boys in particular grumbled at this.

The instructor guided each set of boys to their spots in the classroom: Team Tango and Team Foxtrot, who glared at each other as though they had already begun a lifelong rivalry, Team Conga, and Team 13.

Jamie snickered. "Team 13? Just can't help yourself, Carruthers? Gotta make sure everybody here knows you're on the crew team." He elbowed Adam before taking his place with his own teammate. "You'll never hear the end of this one, Parrish. He goes on and on about how he won them last year's championship."

Adam raised an eyebrow at Jamie, looking mildly impressed.

Tad silently preened. He thought about all the other accomplishments he had made on the crew team, records broken and stories told, and wondered if he should start telling them to Adam.

 _“Broke a leg once, but you know, no big deal,”_ he would tell Adam casually. _“Don’t need your legs to row a boat. Now, the time I had to row with a dislocated shoulder, now that, that was a tough one. We still won though. Of course.”_

Tad's inward pleasure came to an abrupt halt when the instructor placed a hand on either of their backs and unceremoniously shoved the two of them together.

Their noses bumped.

Tad almost blacked out.

“You can’t dance five feet apart,” the instructor scolded.

 _You can’t dance comatose either,_ he wanted to snarl.

He looked at Adam, his face inches away.

Tad gulped. Suddenly his world had been taken over by strange blue eyes, a milky, water-painted color. He saw freckles scattered everywhere, but faint, like stars in a lightening sky.

The instructor guided Tad’s hand to Adam’s back, where he rested it just above the fabric of his shirt.

Adam, on the other hand, apparently had no such concerns for his partner's level of comfort and very easily pressed his palm against Tad's back. Adam quirked an eyebrow at whatever expression Tad was making.

“What?” he whispered.

Tad laughed through his trembling. “Oh, nothing.”

The instructor was saying something, but Tad couldn’t hear him as his ears had begun ringing. He stiffened as the instructor placed Tad’s hands in Adam’s, then stepped back, looking pleased with his work.

He gave one last bout of instructions, almost entirely directed at Adam, as though he didn't trust Tad to remember, before walking towards the next team.

Once all the other teams were in position, Team Congo laughing obscenely and failing to muffle it, the instructor went over to his podium. He held up his phone, a cord attaching it to a little speaker perched on the podium, and tapped the screen a few times. Classical music began to fill the classroom, echoing off the walls.

“Very good, now leaders, repeat after me.”

Tad hadn’t paid attention to which one of them would be leading, but seeing as Adam was following the instructor’s guidance, Tad realized who.

“And followers, now your turn.”

Tad watched the instructor and copied his movement. Having something to do helped him to breathe a little. It was a distraction, something his mind could focus on rather than…

He glanced up into blue eyes.

Adam, Adam, Adam.

“You’re really bad at this,” Adam told him.

Tad ducked his head. “Thanks.”

When the pause in their conversing stretched on too long for Tad’s comfort, he added, “I’m sorry. The only thing I’m really good at is rowing. I should have let you dance with the teacher.”

He stared at their shoes as they attempted to dance. Needing to watch where he placed his feet was the perfect alibi as to why he didn't want to look at Adam's face.

He blinked as Adam released their hands, then blinked again as his hand came underneath his chin and pushed his head up.

Adam glared at him. “I never said I minded.”

He needed to respond to that. Adam required an answer, but all Tad could come up with was, “Oh.”

A small twitch to Adam’s lips revealed a grin, as exasperated as it was. “Oh,” he mimicked back.

“Careful, Foxtrot. You almost tripped there,” one of the boys said. He hadn’t shouted, but with the amplifying the room caused, he might as well had.

One of the Tangos shot back, "Keep talking. We're gonna wipe the floors with y'all's asses."

The instructor screeched, “Boys, that’s enough.”

“The only asses this floor’s gonna feel is yours when we knock you guys out."

“This floor’s gonna feel y’all’s _faces_ if you ain’t careful.”

“Boys!”

Adam’s smile widened. “On second thought, you might be a lot better than most of the people in this room.”

Tad liked Adam’s smile. He found he couldn’t stop staring at it.

“Not as good as you are.”

Adam looked unconvinced. “I just started.”

“And you’re already killing it.”

He laughed.

Tad could listen to the sound forever.

* * *

  
Out of the corner of his eye, Tad saw an iPhone screen light up and realized it was his.

“I thought I said to leave all phones _outside_ the class,” the instructor said, muttering something ineligible when Tad ignored him and opened up the message.

It was a group message from several of his crewmates, but not all of them. He didn't understand the connection between these certain few crewmates until he began reading all the message bubbles that kept popping up, one after the other: these were all the crewmates that had the same World History schedule as him.

_OH MY GODDDD_

_Bruh the size of that thing was UNGODLY_

_What the fuck are we talking about it_

_You missed it!!!_

_There was a MEGA HUGE spider in World!_

_Mr. Milo was SCREAMING_

_THERE WAS A NEST_

_fuck that shit_

_Oh HELL NO_

_Hell to the no_

_Did anyone touch it?_

_Got a vid of the whole thing brothas_

_BROTHAAAA_

_They had to call an exterminator_

_Poor mister spider :(((_

_Shut up Jared no one cares about your spiders_

_The spider king will have your head_

Thankfully, Tad was a well-respected veteran on the crew team. He reaped the rewards of that as his message was answered as soon as he sent it, while he watched others get drowned out in the onslaught of typing bubbles and emojis and gifs.

_Is World canceled then?_

Tad broke into a smile as the replies came in. He was sure Laureate was currently receiving a similar group message from band.

He thought to himself that it would be a good way to make it up to his friend. Watching an exterminator come in and hunt down a prehistoric spider sounded like a hell of a good time.

He looked up to announce to his tiny team of dancers of the news, but they had all filed out except for Adam, who—

Tad’s joy fizzled out as he watched Adam discuss something privately with the instructor. The instructor, for the first time since Tad had met him, had an at-ease smile on his face as he talked. Adam, for his part, looked to be preening.

He no qualms about interrupting them, especially with the benefit of his voice echoing jarringly off the walls.

"Yo, Parrish, World History was just canceled."

Both the instructor and Adam looked at him as though neither believed him.

Tad held up his phone as evidence. “Spider infestation.” He beamed. “Sweet, huh? We should go check it out.”

Adam frowned. He turned hopeful eyes on the instructor. “Actually, this would be a good chance for me to get in extra dance practice.”

The instructor gave him a truly regretful smile. “I’m sorry, Mr. Parrish, but I’m afraid I have other places I need to be now that class is over. You’re welcome to practice on your own, if you would like.”

“Of course,” Adam told him, but Tad could see the disappointment.

“Hey, I don’t have anything to do either.” Tad shrugged. He held out his hand. “Wanna try this again?”

The instructor collected his things, throwing the strap of a fancy-looking duffel bag over his shoulder. "Just remember to lock up on your way out, Mr. Parrish."

Tad frowned, noticing that he was being pointedly ignored here.

“Yes, sir,” Adam answered.

For some reason, Tad cringed at the “sir” part, which was stupid. They were supposed to call all of their teachers “sir” or “ma’am.”

The stupidest things were bothering him these days.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Tad turned to find Adam staring at him. In the silence, the gravity of what he had just offered settled in.

He felt his pulse thudding in his head.

His phone made another sound, demanding attention. Tad immediately latched onto the distraction.

 _Bro,_ a message from Laureate said, _they said World was canceled. Where the hell are you?_

Tad chewed on his bottom lip, trying to figure out how to respond. Lately, anything he said to his best friend pissed him off.

He turned off his message notifications and pulled up his songs. He didn’t have any classical music in his playlist, but thankfully his subscription for the app always offered him a bunch of songs he’d never listen to otherwise.

He clicked on one that looked like something people might have enjoyed three hundred years ago, turned it up to full volume, and settled it on the instructor’s podium.

He spun around, trying to act relaxed as he clapped his hands together. “Okay, Beethoven is playing! You ready?”

Adam looked mildly offended. “That’s not Beethoven.”

“You know what I mean, Parrish.”

“You mean Mozart?”

Tad rolled his head back dramatically and groaned.

Adam Parrish was talented, articulate, and a gift to mankind, but he could also be really, really irritating.

"No more lectures," Tad said, waving his hands back and forth as though to ward off evil. "This is dance class, not history. So! Show me what you got, Parrish."

Without a word, Adam stepped up to him and easily slipped his hand into Tad’s. He pressed a hand to the middle of his back next, making Tad jump forward. Their foreheads knocked together.

“Ow,” Adam hissed, eyes watering

Tad scrubbed at the inflicted part of his forehead and muttered, “Well, it’s your fault for startling me.”

“How? You’re the one who told me you’re ready to start.”

“Well, clearly I lied, and as a witch, you should have known that I was lying. Hence, this is your fault.”

Tad’s pulse kicked into overdrive as Adam tightened his grip on their hands and yanked him closer.

With a sneer, Adam said, “I don’t have time for this, Tad. I have two more classes after this and then two jobs to get to before I can go home and work on homework until three in the morning. Are we dancing or not?”

For two painful heartbeats, Tad considered ducking his head and murmuring something quiet and compliant, like a simple, “Okay,” or, “I’m sorry.”

When he stared down into the fury that was Adam Parrish, however, he decided that he was not going to do that.

Adam’s eyes widened as Tad narrowed his own.

Making sure he had a firm grip on Adam's hand, Tad lifted their hands above their heads and spun him as he'd seen on the celebrity dancing shows his mom liked to watch. He beamed as he surprisingly succeeded, then pulled Adam to him, his back pressed to his chest.

“We’re here to dance,” he whispered in his ear. “Try to keep up.”

He grinned as Adam inhaled furiously at the implication that he was less than perfect.

“Stop fooling around,” he spat, struggling to get out of his grip. It took Tad a second before he realized that he should probably let go now. Reluctantly, he did.

Adam spun to face him.

With his face flushed, Tad could see his freckles more clearly. He frowned, worried that Adam was blushing from embarrassment.

“Sorry,” he murmured, then held out his hand again with a hesitant grin. “Wanna try again?”

“If you ain’t gone spin me like that _again.”_

A startling, pleasant spike went down Tad’s spine at the sudden smack of a thick, Southern accent.

He could tell the instant Adam recognized his own mistake by the way he stiffened. He then stepped up quickly and took Tad’s hand.

"We're wasting time. Just focus," he said, voice devoid of anymore Southern twang. It was as though Adam had sought out whatever had created his accent and then flattened it.

Feeling the rage coming off of Adam in waves, Tad decided to nod along and place his hands where they were supposed to be. Adam took the first step and Tad followed suit.

They fell into a familiar rhythm, the same one they had been perfecting for the last hour. With the simple movements and the power of Mozart, Adam began to slowly unwind.

Tad smiled to himself as he saw the tension leave Adam. From the unyielding grip on his hand, then to the stiffness of his shoulders, he started to relax.

Tad went from smiling to frowning as Adam suddenly seemed to take a dip into being too relaxed. The angry, quick steps of his dance slowed into a trance-like movement. His pinched-up expression had melted away to reveal an exhausted one.

He noticed bags under the boy's eyes, dark and prominent as though someone had swiped above his cheekbones with purple eyeshadow.

“Bro, you sure you shouldn’t be using this hour for a nap? You look like you’re gonna drop dead.”

Adam glared at him through lowered lashes and tired eyes.

 _Drop-dead gorgeous,_ his mind offered up.

 _What the fuck? No,_ he scolded his mind. _Shut up and enjoy the old people music._

He must have been staring for too long at Adam's face because Adam's eyebrows pulled together then as he asked, “What?”

Tad blinked, glancing between his fair hair to his dusting of freckles, to his fathomless blue eyes to his lips.

Adam Parrish was just so damn pretty.

“Nothing,” he answered. He shrugged a little. “Guess I’m just tired too.”

Adam’s squinting suggested that he didn’t believe that, but he also didn’t say anything.

Tad tried to make an effort not to stare so intently, despite the fact that they were face-to-face with less than several inches of space between them. He kept his gaze on their shoes for a little while, not truly seeing them as they moved in slow, uneven circles around the room.

Tad waited for Adam to say something.

Maybe Adam was waiting for him.

No words were exchanged.

Eventually, Tad decided closing his eyes might be the best bet to make Adam comfortable. He fought a grin, happy with his choice when he felt Adam’s forehead against his.

When Adam sighed, Tad felt it all across his face.

“Maybe I am tired,” Adam mumbled.

“Yeah,” Tad agreed.

Neither moved away, pretending to be too tired to notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this was supposed to be Chapter 10, but I was laughing so hard I had to bump it up to Chapter 9 because I couldn’t resist. XD
> 
> I think Chapter 10 will be fun too! It was a toss-up between which one I wanted to release next.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed today’s chapter! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


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